Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to the Bill which, in many respects, I welcome very strongly. It has a sense of direction; the Government have clearly been listening to the advice of employers and the education sector. I very much look forward to hearing shortly the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome.

I cannot recall a time when there has not been a skills shortage or a skills crisis. This is inevitable because the needs of our economy are constantly changing. However, there is a substantial difference today: the needs of our labour market, post Brexit and post Covid, are changing quickly. As an example, we do not have enough technicians or engineers, and there is a need to develop greater strength in digital skills at all levels. As a further example, the pandemic has resulted in a reduction in the number of apprenticeships available. There are not enough generally, nor at degree level.

The lifelong loan entitlement could be a boost to both individuals and employers, but I hope that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, the Government will not try to bolt it on to the current system of funding and will instead make it part of a reformed system of financial support. The Government’s forthcoming consultation should reflect the fact that loans by themselves may not be an attractive proposition to some adults, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, pointed out a few minutes ago.

Recent government policy towards the FE sector and part-time higher education has led to both being treated as the poor relation of traditional academic learning. Funding per student has been lower in FE for too long. There has been a very worrying drop in participation rates in part-time higher education in recent years, caused by funding cuts and the HE loans system. It is vital that the silos between higher, further and adult education and apprenticeships are reduced. Further education and higher education should not have to compete against each other for resources. The ambition should be a unified skills system with expansion of the FE sector, apprenticeships and part-time higher education, with parity of esteem between these and traditional full-time, non-vocational academic routes.

I would like to make a point about progression routes. I welcome national skills funding to help adults have free access to level 3 qualifications through some 400 courses, but there is no mention of any qualifications below level 3, yet it is these which promote progression to higher levels. Six million adults were identified in the Augur review as not having qualifications at level 2, yet the total number of adult learners has been falling in recent years. If we want people to reach level 3 and above, more of them need to achieve level 2. I wonder if the Government have a plan.

The Government’s ambition to put employers at the centre of skills development is welcome. But the test of the new approach will come in how effective the forecasting of future requirements is for industries that are in the early stages of development. Long-term investment in the green economy, for example, will require new skills sets at all levels. As the Bill progresses through the House, I hope we can examine whether the Government are putting in place structures that will effectively identify skills needs five years and 10 years ahead and how our education system as a whole should adapt to deliver them.

I spoke earlier of the lifelong loan entitlement, and I understand that a consultation will start this summer, but secondary legislation can be expected only in 2024, with implementation in 2025. Given the impact of the pandemic, what is happening over the next four years to ensure that all those who need to access training can get it, in addition to meeting the needs of employers post Brexit? Does it have to take so long—four years—to effect this change?

The lifelong loan entitlement may be a crucial part of future plans, but a lot more detail is needed on the extent of entitlements, on the funding of modular systems, on repayment terms, on whether modular study will be permitted for all subject areas or just those defined by the Government, on whether students can get the same support for their costs irrespective of their method of study, and on whether existing graduates can use it to retrain.

Finally, I hope that we will take a close look at how local skills improvement plans will work in practice. It will not be the first time that such planning has been localised. That said, I wonder if the Government have a plan for bringing together the information from all the local skills improvement plans to shape national workforce planning? It will be extremely important to do so.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinarily wide-ranging debate. I thank the Minister for her co-operation and for having meetings with us beforehand. I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Black, on a brilliant maiden speech. I noticed all the Lancaster connections, with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, being Lancastrians; my daughter and her husband met at Lancaster 30 years ago, so it has fond memories for me too. I hope we shall hear much more from her in the future, whether it is on the living or the dead.

Given all the very many briefings we have received from far and wide, I start by asking the Minister what discussions the Bill team had with stakeholders before drafting the Bill. Did they take advice from the Association of Colleges, the Open University, City & Guilds—I declare my interest as a vice-president, having worked there for 20 years—or from the Federation of Awarding Bodies, which held a discussion this morning that threw up some interesting questions that I had not thought of, or from independent training providers? We heard from the noble Lords, Lord Bichard and Lord Aberdare, about the importance of independent training providers, and other awarding organisations. If so, did the Government take their advice or, given all the amendments that we seem to be throwing up, did they proceed without reference to those whose professional lives have been devoted to skills, colleges and adult education?

I am also involved in the Professional Qualifications Bill, where the Minister keeps telling us he will “assuage” us, as he attempts to convince the Committee that all is well with that Bill. Will the Minister hope to “assuage” us this afternoon, I wonder?

Of course, we are all delighted to have a skills Bill; as we know, skills and further education are too often overlooked. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I blame it in part on the fact that almost all officials and politicians have gone the university route. They have had little or no contact with work-based, vocational qualifications, nor indeed with further education, as they have followed the gilded path of academia, often regarding trade, if they regard it at all, as another less privileged world. How wonderful that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, is a shining example of how very mistaken that view is.

The growth in apprenticeships is beginning to erode the divide and curiously, one outcome of Covid may be that university experience with no face-to-face teaching, socialising or drunken raves may be looking less inviting to the young school leavers. So we approach this Bill with high hopes and expectations but, having read the myriad briefs, those hopes and expectations are not as high as they might be.

If I am one of the winders, I like to namecheck, but I am afraid I will have to apologise this time. I have listened to everyone, including when I was doing my duty on the Woolsack—I am quite capable of multitasking —but time will not permit me to acknowledge all the insightful contributions we have heard today.

I am sorry the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, is not in his place. I welcomed his piece in yesterday’s Times, with his well-reasoned arguments for abandoning the ELQ rules whereby you cannot get funding for studying for an equivalent or lower-level qualification than one you already possess, even in a completely different subject area and when it could open doors to other employments. I hope the Government will look at this again, because it really is very detrimental.

We welcome the lifelong learning entitlement, although we Liberal Democrats regret that it is in the form of a loan. We heard the reasons why from both the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld. Many adults will be reluctant to incur debt when, mid-life, they have responsibilities to families, so pursuing their own improvement could seem selfish. We wish to see this as a grant, a skills wallet, which we are sure would pay for itself as the recipient’s earning power and self-esteem increase.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, we are also anxious not to lose sight of the value of levels 1, 2 and 3 qualifications. Level 1 can often be the stepping stone for those who have never passed any exams to gain new confidence and the desire to continue to learn. We saw this many times with NVQs at level 1, derided by the snobbish press as “not very qualified”. Actually, they applied that to all the NVQs, which just shows how ignorant and prejudiced some journalists can be. At City & Guilds we saw non-learners grow in stature when awarded a national qualification—a national certificate—and given a real incentive to continue. The Minister says that they do not feature in this legislation because they are catered for elsewhere. Perhaps she could clarify that.

All the questions I would have asked have, of course, by now already been asked—just not by me, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said. I will concentrate on a handful of areas in which we would really like to hear the Minister’s reply and hope to be assuaged. The first is the relationship between Ofqual and IfATE, which has already been raised. The Minister said this would be collaborative. Will it be collaborative? Will it duplicate? Will it make things much more complex? The fear is that these two organisations will make the situation more complex.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, talked passionately about enforcing the Baker clause. When the technical education Bill was going through, this was the only amendment the Government accepted. Of course, it was a Conservative amendment. All our brilliant Liberal Democrat amendments got thrown out. Then an election was called so we were not even able to have ping-pong. The Baker clause is a very valuable thing whereby people have to go into schools, at an early enough stage that the youngsters still have decisions to make, to tell them about UTCs, colleges and all the other possibilities.

This leads us on to the whole business of careers information and guidance, which a great number of noble Lords brought up, including the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lord Stunell in connection with the construction industry particularly. It is vital that young people are shown the possibilities at a very early stage. There is evidence that youngsters at the age of six or seven have already gender-stereotyped particular jobs. This is not good for them, the economy or anybody.

Schools need to collaborate with colleges. Schools have all sorts of incentives for wanting to hang on to their pupils and to make them do GCSEs and A-levels. My noble friend Lord Storey asked: would it not be wonderful if schools celebrated their apprenticeships? I remember, in the balmy days of coalition government when I was in the DfE, saying to Michael Gove: “For goodness’ sake, get the schools to celebrate their apprenticeship leavers. If they’re putting up a placard outside the school saying, ‘These kids have all gone on to university’, put up another one saying, ‘These ones have gone on to apprenticeships’.” He said, “What a very good idea, Sue”, and did absolutely nothing about it—but there we are.

If we are to work with the colleges, one of the inequities that needs to be redressed is the difference in pay between college teachers and schoolteachers. It really is not right, so will the Minister please take that away and try to do something about it?

One of my major concerns when the technical education Bill was going through was that T-levels were technical—just “technical”. As we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Puttnam, Lord Johnson and Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, a whole range of craft and creative industry qualifications really deserve their place. Not only are they good for careers and economy but, by goodness, they increase our quality of life. Yet this emphasis all the time on technical qualifications rather implies that craft does not matter; it does, and we need to do something about it.

I had another bit of paper somewhere; I have just a couple more things. We fully endorse funding for modular and short courses. That is absolutely essential, but why not until 2025? As we have already heard, that really needs to come forward. We need it as soon as possible.

We also notice with concern the sad drop-off in part-time learners from both the Open University and Birkbeck, but I also read that there has been a 26% fall in undergraduate higher education in the last decade. Where are all our young people going? What are they doing? This really is not good enough. We need a full-time push to try to get skills and education back on the agenda. If this Bill can be the catalyst for that, that will be terrific.

I have a last bit of paper somewhere, except that I have lost it. No, here we are. We have too much paper in this place. I have to say that, when you sit for six hours in the Chamber with a mask on, some of your rationale does disappear.

We have had an absolutely wonderful variety of speeches. All of us in the Chamber are committed to skills and education, and to the Bill going through and improving skills and education opportunities for everybody, but we have also heard major concerns that it really does need amendment. I feel sure that we shall all be prepared to work cross-party to try to ensure that we improve the future for young people and adults, and that the Bill ends up as a major contribution to the economy and the well-being of all of us. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and to Committee.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

We do not prescribe details: there are several causes for failure, and there could be different arrangements for foundation courses and funding; there could be tutoring and mentoring; and there could be elements in teacher training and the Office for Students targeted at addressing the obstacles students face, which in some cases, notably that of Gypsies, Travellers and Roma young people, include cultural prejudice. The Runnymede Trust’s latest report says that only 12% of secondary school teachers have any material on how to talk about race in their initial teacher training. There are willing and expert hands in institutions and there is capacity in the department to work out a strategy. It is political will that is required. There is ample scope for levelling up here.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 1 and 6, to which I have added my name, and to Amendment 20 in my name and that of my colleague and noble friend Lord Storey. I declare an interest for the whole Bill: I am a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation for which I worked for some 20 years.

On Amendments 1 and 6, I have been crossing out what I would have said as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said it far more effectively than I could. I do not believe in repeating what others have said, even if I have not said it myself, so I shall just agree with what he said. It is essential that we take into account potential students—and not just the young people of Eastbourne, I suggest—who should surely be important players in any discussion. If there are no students, there is no point in employers wishing to train them. It is not just the views and interests of students but those of student unions, trade unions, relevant community groups, agencies and local government that need to be taken into account. There should also be constant dialogue with careers advisers.

Funding must be made available for social mobility. An aspiring blacksmith or chef should not be disadvantaged if local needs are engineering-based. Dyslexic students should not be disadvantaged if their skillset is different from local needs. Amendment 20 ensures that providers of distance learning are brought into play. As the Explanatory Notes set out, the role in the local skills ecosystem played by providers without a local bricks and mortar presence in a particular area is taken into account in local skills improvement plans. Of course, it may not be bricks and mortar. It could be any skills area, but distance learning is truly important, as the work of the Open University and other distance providers makes clear. The OU has been a life-changer for many who could not study residentially.

Often, people may wish to study for employment not directly available in their area but for which they can develop skills and earn qualifications which will serve them well in other parts of the country. We should not be depriving them of the wherewithal to do just that. Throughout the Bill we shall seek to ensure that distance learning is taken into account. This amendment will do that and provide opportunities for learning to those without local provision.

I add my support to Amendments 11 and 81, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, a staunch supporter of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, but these proposals go much broader, to those who have problems with GCSE English and maths which, for so many skill areas, are not essential. To have an academic qualification in English and maths is not necessary for a whole range of perfectly useful employment opportunities. I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Addington, who will be following me to speak for himself. They are important amendments too.

I hope that the Minister will be able to look favourably on the amendments in this group.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates when everybody has said and everybody is going to agree with everybody, so let try to do it in as precised a way as possible. Before, I do, I should remind the Committee of my declared interests and let the Committee know that I have become an adviser to Genius Within, which looks at neurodiversity with Birkbeck, University of London.

The basic thrust of this is: what will be put into the plans, how flexible will it be and how will it adjust to the needs of those people who are supposed to be covered by it? We have heard about many subjects. When someone mentions dyslexia in front of me in one of these debates, I give myself a little cheer because, hopefully, the word is getting out.

The most important thing about my Amendment 22, if you throw everything away, is identification. Most people in the neurodiverse sector or with any special educational need have moderate or lower-level needs that, if not addressed or supported, can lead to failure to get academic qualifications giving access to training. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and I might argue about GCSEs and certain points, but the essential thrust of what she said carries through to these groups. Someone who has trouble in that learning environment will always have trouble. If we suddenly get—as I did with the officials who the Minister was kind enough to give me access to, for which I am eternally thankful—“Oh but we have a high-needs strategy”, well, that is great, but what happens to the 18% of the population who are identified as having special educational needs but who are not in the high-needs group? They will become your workforce. They are the people who are underachieving and either do not get jobs or get jobs which they do not fulfil or can access other qualifications with.

Please, when we are doing this, can we build in a capacity to identify people who have already failed in the school system? As adults, they will be presenting differently, with established types of behaviour, which may mean that they are resistant to certain activities because who on earth wants to be told again: “You’ve failed, you can’t do something”? Let us take everybody who is scared of heights and stick them up that ladder and shake it. Let us make sure that it is uncomfortable and that something that you do not like to have gone through again. What will happen about identifying the people in these groups, people with ADHD, people who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, with parents with the same problems, who do not have the type of parents that I had behind me?

I appreciate that this is all that you can do here, but what steps will be taken to ensure that everybody gets through and is supported? The idea that you need only a functional grasp of English and maths is a step forward, but we must embrace the fact that there is now technology available that can do most of this for you, at least at a functional level. If you can talk, you can word-process now. Can we ensure that this is taken into account in the plans because the groups who are unskilled, which we are addressing, will be helped?

My Amendment 26 is about looking slightly wider than just at one area. It came from a conversation that I had with someone at the British Dyslexia Association, who said, if someone feels that they would be happier in something that uses hand skills and is slightly out of area, please can they be supported to get there? This is true of virtually all groups but is probably slightly more intense in this situation. If you are living in an area which is just on the boundary, the thing that you may want to train in is probably in the next area. All of us have done this for schools to work. Arguments about constituency boundaries go to an audience where many may have an interest. Can we please take that into account? When the Minister comes to answer, or at a later stage, can he give some idea of how these group plans or areas of concentration will work together? If they do not, we will be excluding large numbers of people from getting the support that they need where that is a local employment opportunity for them. We are still assuming that they will stay in their local areas for jobs for long periods. If we are doing that, then let us at least be realistic about it.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I shall aim to be brief, which may be welcome at this stage of the evening. I have added my name to Amendment 31, of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which leaves out “reasonably”—why not just have “representative”, which is a term that is vague enough not to need qualification? Legislation should be clear. This “reasonably” puts doubts into the worth of the employer representative body. However, I am slightly concerned to see that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has inserted “reasonably” in Amendment 17, which seems to be slightly contradictory.

This group has thrown up many other issues. There are concerns about the creeping potential for the Secretary of State to make overall interventions in matters that were set up to operate with some independence from government—Amendment 36 addresses this. There is obviously a tension between local and national, and we have seen this in a number of recent Bills, where the Government are intent on taking powers that would be much better used by those closer to the issues.

After his impassioned tirade, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has obviously exhausted himself and left, but there are many amendments in this group to do with the importance of local authorities and mayoral combined authorities. They must not be constantly subjected to national government oversight. Further education providers are also expert in these fields and must not be overlooked. As my noble friend Lord Storey set out, much is expected of our further education colleges, but they are overlooked far too often. They are well used to collaborating with other local bodies, and their knowledge and contacts must not be ignored. They are also very good at teamwork.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, also makes clear the importance of SMEs, the self-employed and public and voluntary sector employers—so consultation must be as wide-ranging as possible, with national government taking a back seat, if it takes a seat at all. Colleges should have the power to challenge the local skills improvement plans where, from their local experience, they can see that all is not well.

I support the misgivings of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, about employers. I remember well that, when we were developing national vocational qualifications—which were employer led—at City & Guilds, it was incredibly difficult to get the employers to decide which skills they actually wanted. In the end, it was left to the colleges and the awarding bodies, which barely get a mention in the Bill, to get these employer-led qualifications into action. This is a great lack—the Government ignore the colleges and awarding bodies when they are discussing anything to do with skills, but they are the people who really make it happen.

These amendments call for monitoring and reporting. The crucial element is to give authority to those who are closer to the issues and have the expertise to make judgments. The Government must learn to take a back seat where they do not know best. My noble friend Lord Storey mentioned the effect on Liverpool when it was allowed to thrive when local people took control.

In Amendment 28, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, mentions plans about “trailblazer areas”. I do not think we know very much about these—perhaps the Minister can enlighten us about them. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke about the LEPs and their work, which has once again been overlooked.

So I trust that the Minister will see that it is in the local and national interest for national government not to intervene at every step and to learn from people who do know what is going on. I hope that she will be able to accept some, if not all, of the amendments in this group.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, despite several noble Lords listed to speak falling by the wayside, I commend those noble Lords who have stuck it out for their contributions to the debate on this group, and I appreciate their support for the amendments standing in my name.

As many noble Lords have already said today, this is a pretty thin Bill. In her response to group 1, the Minister called it a “framework”, and one might say that that is actually generous. However, the cornerstone is the development of local skills improvement plans, with the role of employer representative bodies being crucial in that process. The manner in which the Bill proposes that ERBs—I will use that shortened terminology—should be designated is flawed, to the extent that it would, we believe, make the Bill unworkable.

There needs to be a much more clearly defined and significant role for local and mayoral combined authorities, as well as colleges and other training providers. The skills needed in Greater Manchester will be significantly different from the skills needed in Cornwall or Cumbria. There has to be an appreciation of differing labour markets, and the way they have developed and are likely to develop. Surely that is best understood at local and regional levels. It is impossible to prescribe the skills needs for the whole of England from an office in the DfE HQ in Great Smith Street, yet that is what the centralising measures in the Bill propose. In relation to the skills agenda, as my colleague in another place, the shadow apprenticeships Minister, Toby Perkins MP, memorably said,

“I have never heard anybody suggest that a more hands-on role for Gavin Williamson was needed”.


That centralisation is very much part of a pattern that we have seen from this Government. They seem to be rowing back significantly on English devolution, and last week the Welsh First Minister’s frustration was plain to see as he accused the Prime Minister of what he called “aggressively ignoring” Wales’s Parliament.

In this Bill, local authorities, including mayoral combined authorities, are to be marginalised, ignoring the fact that they have been democratically elected. Although we fully support the principle of employers playing a more active role in driving certain aspects of the skills system, as well as a more specialised role for FE colleges in delivering higher-level technical skills, that must take place within the context of a holistic and objective overview of the whole education, skills and employment support system, to guard against introducing further complexity. That is what our Amendment 13 seeks to achieve.

We believe that the best way to bring that about is to have a formal role for mayoral combined authorities, where they exist, and other local authorities, in the development of LSIPs, reflecting their unique understanding of their communities and, as I said earlier, their job markets. As my noble friend Lord Bradley said, there is currently no provision or requirement within the Bill for the Secretary of State or the designated ERB to engage with mayoral combined authorities or local authorities—or, indeed, with any other stakeholder —in relation to the designation of an appropriate ERB to lead this activity. The same applies to the boundaries of the LSIPs.

On the subject of mayoral combined authorities, my noble friend Lord Adonis, in a bravura performance earlier, said that the reason he had been given for excluding MCAs was that they were not employers. That might come as news to Sadiq Khan, Tracy Brabin, Andy Burnham, Andy Street and others, who must be superhuman if they do all that work on their own. They have considerable staffs at their disposal: MCAs are indeed employers. I do not have the figures to hand, but I suspect that all of them have several hundred employees. That would be like a small or medium-sized enterprise—and those, as I shall say in a few moments, should very much be part of the consideration when putting together the employer representative bodies.

We agree with the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and of my noble friend Lord Rooker, saying that ERBs must develop local skills improvement plans as joint partners with colleges and have input from the wider community. Our Amendments 14 and 16 emphasise the fact that local skills improvement plans should draw on the views of local authorities and training providers in the area. I have to ask the Minister: why would the Government not want that sort of input, if they want the best possible response to local training and employment needs? Those people should also be involved in the ERB itself. The aim is to ensure that LSIPs are more collaborative, with local further and adult education providers closely aligning with existing strategies. Why not build on the existing skills advisory approach and develop a more inclusive way of providing advice on employers’ needs?

The existing landscape includes, of course, local enterprise partnerships, which do not merit a mention in the Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Inglewood and Lord Curry, both made a strong case for LEPs to have a continued role in the delivery of the skills agenda. I asked the Minister on Second Reading what plans the Government had for LEPs, and perhaps she will enlighten us on that matter on this occasion.

Amendments 28 and 29 seek to ensure that there is appropriate consultation of MCAs and local authorities prior to the publication of the local skills improvement plans, and for those elected bodies to give their consent to the designation of ERBs. Amendment 37 seeks to ensure that, once designated, the ERB ensures effective partnership, working with providers, local authorities and mayoral combined authorities to support integration of the skills and employment system in each locality. Again, why would the Government have a problem with these sensible improvements to the operation of employer representative bodies?

As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, it is about teamwork. That said, I trust that he will forgive me for being somewhat less enthusiastic about his analogy with the England football team, although, for the record, I do wish them well tomorrow. Our Amendments 31 and 32 seek to gain an understanding of the Government’s intentions in Clause 2. The role of employer representative bodies will be important in shaping local systems, and there is a risk that some ERBs might represent a narrow group of employer voices, focus too much on current skills needs, or be unwilling to take advice from other sources. It is important to ensure that they represent the full breadth of employer voices, focus on future demand and, of course, have appropriate governance.

My noble friend Lady Morris said that she is not sure that the Bill has the power structure right, or the right lead provider; I very much agree with her. Another question is: what will be the role of the chambers of commerce? They are not necessarily representative bodies and vary greatly from one part of the country to another. It is an open secret that they are distinctly cool about being directly involved in the formation of the LSIPs and I understand that this is even the case for some of the largest ones, such as Greater Manchester.

Most employers and employers’ organisations do not really want to run the system; they just want a system that works. They have no more interest in running further education than in running a school or a university. They want to concentrate on their core businesses and do not have a great deal of time to spare in developing local structures or devising plans beyond their own personal needs. As my noble friend Lady Morris said, employers are primarily focused on the now. That is generally understandable, but it is important that ERBs really are representative of the area for which they will have responsibility, so I look forward to hearing from the Minister why the Government have no greater ambition than to make a reasonable attempt at making them representative.

As the eagle-eyed noble Baroness, Lady Garden, pointed out, our Amendment 17—which is not being discussed today—also inserts the word “reasonable”. In my defence, I can say only that that refers to relevant providers, whereas the point I am making here applies to the employer representative bodies. It is surely not too much to expect that the ERBs include a wider range of local employer interests, including small and medium-sized enterprises, the self-employed, and public and third-sector employers. This would ensure that a range of employers of different sizes is represented in the ERB, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, seeks in his Amendment 35.

There is also a need to clarify the role and accountabilities of employer representative bodies in developing their LSIPs, including describing the role of the ERBs, their accountabilities and the process for responding to instances where they do not deliver this effectively. Amendment 36 seeks to ensure accountability and oversight of ERBs, about which my noble friend Lord Bradley spoke compellingly, specifically in relation to the Greater Manchester MCA. This includes preparing and publishing a conflict of interest policy, which could be important where major employers such as universities or local authorities are also providers of training, or where employer representative bodies run publicly funded training providers—as some do—which compete with colleges for apprenticeships and other contracts.

The requirement also to have regard to national strategies is important, not least in the run-up to COP 26, because in March the Government published their industrial decarbonisation strategy. What will they have to say to ERBs about, for example, the content of their local skills improvement plans with regard to chapter 6 of the decarbonisation strategy, which is entitled “Accelerating Innovation of Low Carbon Technologies”? That could be one example of a situation where colleges and other providers feel the need to challenge local skills improvement plans and put forward revisions where they feel the plans fall short.

If the aim of the Bill really is to deepen the strategic relationship with, and service to, employers, then delivering this must involve a genuine partnership of colleges and other providers empowered to stimulate and challenge articulated demand rather than acting as passive policy recipients. It is important that they have the means of doing so; if the Minister is unable to support Amendment 36, perhaps she will tell the Committee what recourse will be available to providers in such circumstances.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I intended to support Amendment 40A. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Baker, intends to move it. Has it dropped out of the system? I was not informed.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, has dropped out; Amendment 40A has not dropped out.

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[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a non-executive director of the Careers & Enterprise Company. I was sorry not to be able to speak last week on the first day of Committee, particularly in support of Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and on the broader debate about the relationship between local skills improvement plans and national skills needs. I sense that this debate on Amendments 8 and 40A is a continuation of that and I think that the Committee is quite rightly looking for clarification about the relationship between all forms of education and training providers and employers, and identifying skills needs and the careers inspiration that is needed. I hope that on the next day in Committee we will get on to debating Amendment 82 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and related amendments about the vital role that schools will play in shaping the careers aspirations of their pupils and the work of careers hubs.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, I wanted to comment on Amendment 40A. It appears to be drafted relating just to schools providing sixth-form education. However, evidence shows—and it is certainly the aspiration of the Careers & Enterprise Company—that pupils of all ages, even from primary school upwards, benefit from receiving careers interactions and inspiration and hearing about the different careers and jobs that are available. I would not confine the involvement of schools in the work and the shaping of local skills improvement plans just to those with sixth forms.

I hope that the Minister will take from this debate and from what Members are saying that we would welcome further details from Ministers about the way in which the whole careers and skills ecosystem, if I can call it that, will work. That is why the results from the local skills improvement plan pilots will be so important. I do not think that anyone can doubt the critical involvement not only of education providers of all kinds in knowing the need for local skills and national skills—we particularly talked about green jobs and careers in digital, technology and artificial intelligence on the first day in Committee—but also of employers through these employer representative bodies and the local enterprise partnerships too. The sooner Ministers are able to share the results of the local skills improvement plan pilots with Members, the better, as I think that that will help to explain how this whole ecosystem will operate.

My final comment relates to these two amendments. We have to be wary of overloading schools in all ways. As everybody knows, schools are busy places; there are many demands on their time, particularly in light of the challenges from the last 16 months related to Covid and teaching through a pandemic. While schools of course have a vital role to play in facilitating careers inspiration and careers education, it cannot be done without the involvement of employers and businesses from outside. That is the model behind the Careers & Enterprise Company and other local careers initiatives. I hope that Ministers will want to balance that as they continue drafting policies and evaluating these pilots going forward.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I aim to speak succinctly in my contribution and hope that other noble Lords will follow suit. I do not look forward to going on until midnight for the next three days of Committee. My last Tube goes at half past midnight and I might have a sense of humour failure if I miss it.

Amendment 8 brings together schools, colleges, universities and adult and community learning providers to ensure that all those involved with skills learning are working in collaboration. We do not need competition where different providers, including independent ones, cater for different members of the community when they all have the aim of improving skills and employability. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, says, we support the aim of complementary roles and look for a whole-education collaboration style.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, it is often left to the further education providers to provide the resource-intensive programmes. As we all know, further education is poorly served in funding, teachers and so on, so we look to the Government to do much more to support the further education sector, which is vital in any of the skills programmes.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, was not here to speak to his Amendment 40A but, like the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, I will talk to it, because it is vital that sixth-form educators are aware of the full range of skills and employment opportunities. Far too often they are focused solely on academic achievement, which leaves out a whole load of young people whose skills are more practically based. We must take every step possible to ensure that young people are fully informed of all the work-based practical options which the country needs and which may play to their strengths in ways that A-levels do not. I absolutely support what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said; we will come later to amendments to ensure that primary schools are included in careers guidance. Of course, some of the skills in the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, are the very ones that university technical colleges do so much to promote. I hope that we shall get a positive response from the Minister on these two amendments.

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[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I support these three amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and others. It is particularly important that the views and aspirations of individual learners should be taken account of by LSIPs, not least those who find that their ambitions cannot be met by existing employers or employment opportunities within their current environment or circumstances, and those who wish to start their own businesses. LSIPs need to be aware of opportunities relevant to wider national skills needs, as Amendment 33 requires.

I was very struck by the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, last week on the views he had heard from unemployed young people. They may need specific personalised help and support to prepare themselves for work and get into the skills system at all after long periods of unemployment or, perhaps, no previous employment. This is most likely to be provided by independent training providers, often within the frame- work of schemes such as Kickstart, but it is not clear to me whether the Bill makes provision for funding such extra support; perhaps the Minister could say how she expects that need to be met.

I also share the view expressed by many noble Lords of the need for a national skills strategy to provide a clear and coherent framework for the education and skills system. The national strategic skills audit proposed by Amendment 85 would be an important part of developing such a strategy, and I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that the Government are planning something along those lines to underpin the new system which they intend to create and for which the Bill provides a framework.

I imagine that this may well be another part of the remit of the skills and productivity board, which the Minister has mentioned from time to time, so I found the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on his attempts to find out more about the board somewhat disturbing. I hope the Minister may be able to tell us more about that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, as last week, I have added my name to Amendments 15 and 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I support his Amendment 85. He set out very clearly why those amendments are needed and, on the principle that I do not repeat things just because I have not yet said them, I will not go into detail on that. We have already explained why potential students should be taken into account.

Amendment 33 would add a clause to ensure that the employer representative body is required to be aware of skills in demand nationally which may not be in demand in the local area. If young people or adults are enthusiastic to learn skills which may not be available locally but are in demand elsewhere, it is really important that national demand should be recognised and skills training made available, even if the skills are not, or not yet, required locally. If a young person or adult is desperate to become a farrier or an aeronautical engineer but there is nothing in their locality, they should be enabled to follow their talents and interests. We must have a national picture of skills training and, if need be, there should be help with travel for those who want to pursue their skills out of area.

The amendments make it clear that skills needs and shortages must be seen in a national context, even if that means that those training need to move to find work. Again, let us never forget distance learning, which can be valuable in such times and has no barriers.

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, made the valid point that we must do some blue skies thinking about what will be needed in future, and Amendment 85 mentions medium and long-term national skills. Who would have thought two years ago that we would all have needed to become proficient in Teams and Zoom? It is quite a wonderful advance really, but I do not think anyone predicted it, and we must always respond to unpredictable events in future.

My noble friend Lady Sheehan has given our support to Amendment 85 in this group, because a national strategic skills audit would be an invaluable tool to assess how our skills shortages are being addressed, alongside the invaluable task of working towards net-zero future jobs. This need not be an excessively cumbersome or costly exercise, but having a body with an overview of skills is surely effective for jobs and training. I know that the Government are always reluctant to set up new bodies, but this one would have a co-ordinating role which could prove invaluable in generating skills in the right places. I hope that the Minister will see that this group of amendments is well worthy of government support.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, we welcome the amendments and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on reminding us of the bigger picture in skills development. Effectively, these amendments relate to the national skills strategy and seek to ensure that employers, colleges and universities adopt a far-sighted approach by planning to develop the skills and apprenticeships for the jobs of the future and, in doing so, help to shape a more secure and sustainable economy for the country. An employer representative body that did not follow that path should not last for long.

It is crucial that we maximise the power of the economy by delivering on genuine lifelong learning so that people can grasp the opportunity to reskill or upskill when they need it and as often as they need it. Equipping the workforce with new skills for the jobs of the future will help build job security, which in turn will bring sustainability and resilience back to the economy and public services, at the same time helping our high streets to reinvent themselves and, hopefully, begin to thrive again.

From green jobs in manufacturing electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines to fintech, digital media and film, there is a pressing need to grow modern industries to build a long-term economy that provides good-quality and well-paid jobs and is thus fit for the future I am sure that the Minister will be keen to tell noble Lords how the industrial decarbonisation strategy, launched earlier this year, would fit in to this future-proofing approach, which will be enhanced if the Government are willing to accept these modest but, I would say, important amendments. They are complemented by Amendment 85, which would require the Secretary of State to establish a panel to undertake a national strategic skills audit to be updated every three years. The Government's industrial decarbonisation strategy cannot exist in a vacuum. It must interact with the industrial strategy which, noble Lords may remember, was published in 2017, but seems to have been hidden in plain sight ever since, the green jobs task force, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred and the broader skills agenda into which the Bill will play.

In fairness to the Government—not something I am characterised by—the industrial strategy was indeed dusted down and updated as recently as January, setting out what are termed “grand challenges”, designed to put the UK at the forefront of the industries of the future and improving the country’s productivity.

That is all good, stirring stuff, and absolutely necessary because, as my noble friend Lord Knight highlighted last week, on our first day in Committee, we currently have a reactive skills system that is too often tortuously slow in responding to new demands, never mind anticipating them. A strategy formulated with an understanding of the need to embrace net-zero future jobs and skills would address that issue and, over time, could open up many more employment markets. I genuinely hope that that is a role that the industrial strategy will adopt, with a national skills strategy a key part of it.

My noble friend Lord Liddle rightly pointed to the lack of evidence that the Department for Education has a long-term vision. If there were one and it were cross-cutting in nature, a national skills strategy could benefit from a comprehensive assessment of our medium and long-term skills needs, with the goal of creating not simply secure employment but, in doing so, achieving the country’s climate change and biodiversity targets. I say to the Minister on these amendments: what is not to like?

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I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say in last week’s Committee, and I think that she said that the role of the Secretary of State was not to comment on the substance but to verify the process. What does that mean? Does it mean that the Secretary of State will not interfere with the judgments that have been made about what skills to prioritise? Is it simply the Secretary of State checking that a proper consultation has been carried out among employers in the area, checking that all the known facts have been gathered and assessed and that a thorough job of work has been done, and then giving it a tick or saying “You need to do your homework a bit better”? What actually is the role of the Secretary of State in relation to these local plans? The amendments that have been proposed try to give that question an answer. I am not sure that they have got it right perfectly, but they try to give that question an answer—but I greatly look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 27 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Aberdare, and Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. These amendments stress the need for local and national co-ordination and place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that local and national skills needs are both involved in national policy planning, which is surely only common sense if the country is to address skills shortages, of which we know there are many, and provide a functioning feedback loop, as the noble Lord said. It is also important that this information should be readily available to all the educational bodies involved in skills training. Like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I find it surprising that this is not already in place.

I wholly support the information being available to schools from the age of 11. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, touched on this in an earlier amendment. But, as we know, 11 is really too late to start careers advice, which needs to begin at primary level, where young people, particularly those whose skills are more practical than academic, can begin to see pathways for progression and to have some confidence in their future. I can understand why the provision in this amendment may not extend to primary schools, but we must never overlook the very young in these discussions.

The local skills improvement plans should be given to all those who work with the education and training of the future workforce. They should certainly be on websites, but steps should also be taken to ensure that these providers actually access them and that everyone within their organisation is aware of them. There is little point in assembling all the information if learners are blissfully aware that it exists. So, for the moment, the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, is definitely a step forward.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Amendment 30 requires that the Secretary of State must publish LSIPs and distribute them to schools and all post-16 education providers. However, there is little point in having a plan if no one is aware of its contents. Yet, despite the requirements for providers to have regard to LSIPs, the Bill is silent on how LSIPs will be published or disseminated. I know that the Minister responded that a model LSIP can be provided, but this amendment seeks a much wider and co-ordinated task. Does the Minister intend, as the amendment suggests, for the DfE to take responsibility for this? Does she agree that publishing all local skills improvement plans will allow for areas to draw on each other’s strategies? That would be particularly helpful for a complementary regional approach and would promote best practice. Or does she envisage that such responsibility will fall to ERBs? If so, can she advise whether they will have the resources and a dedicated budget for such a responsibility?

Perhaps the Government believe that the onus should be on providers themselves to track down where LSIPs have been published. If so, where should they look—to the chamber of commerce, or local authority websites? How does that fit with the lack of role of local authorities and mayoral combined authorities in the process? I hope that she can assure the House that there is indeed a plan for publication and distribution, and I further reiterate my noble friend Lord Liddle’s probing question around the role of the Secretary of State in relation to local plans.

I also speak in support of Amendment 27 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, which requires the Secretary of State to publish a response to each LSIP, including an action plan for how they will support areas to address their skills need. I agree with the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, about where the strategies approach will be developed, using LSIPs to feed into national strategies and creating the feedback loop that is so essential. It is very important, given that LSIPs will need to be responsive to national level strategies, and given the Secretary of State’s powers to intervene if they believe that providers are failing to adhere to LSIPs or not meeting local needs, as seen through the lens of local employers.

I further understand that the notion and definition of “local” has been much discussed during the passage of this Bill already—but I respectfully point out that it continues to be raised by noble Lords because of the still undefined nature of the link between local and national priorities. When I entered local government almost 20 years ago, I was reminded that all politics is local, and I came to recognise that most assuredly throughout my tenure. I would further add that local knowledge and experience is invaluable in feeding into the national strategic overview.

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[The Lord Bishop of Durham [V]]

My Lords, I first need to declare my interest as chair of the National Society. I should also apologise that I was unable to take part in Second Reading because of other engagements; my noble friend the Bishop of Leeds spoke in my stead. I also need to apologise for a complete error on my part in not being available to speak to Amendment 11, to which my name was added, during day one of Committee; that was entirely an administrative error at my end.

However, I now enter into the debate on a very small matter, on Amendment 41, on which I simply want to endorse the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about the phrase “from time to time”. The language seems too loose. The word “regularly” implies something more frequent without expressing exactly what that regularity is. Put simply, regular review that connects with potential changing local needs makes good sense. The amendment simply tightens this up.

But I want to connect Amendment 41 to Amendment 43. My local college, Bishop Auckland College, which is an excellent example of FE provision, in reviewing the support for SEN in its own context, also found itself reviewing the wider provision for the students with SEN who were coming into the college. That led it to recognise that there was a serious gap in provision locally, which has led it further to now open a campus for a school specialising in special educational needs support for those who need the provision of a specific school with all the facilities provided. That means that the local FE has now added to the provision in the area. It also means that it has developed, or is developing now, a much longer-term vision for support for these students. It will see them through their secondary education and then into the FE itself. There are potentially all sorts of long-term advantages, I believe, for some of the students in this provision.

I think that Amendment 43 makes complete sense, as the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, has so helpfully outlined. I wish to add my support to both Amendments 41 and 43.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, my role in this group is really to add support to my noble friend Lord Addington, who knows more than I ever will about special educational needs. He and the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, are a formidable team for these amendments. Obviously, these two noble kinsmen disagree on the use of “from time to time”, but that is not as important as the fact that they call for reviews to take place on these matters.

What matters is that colleges should be fully aware of the skills, talents and opportunities, but also the limitations, of those with special educational needs. As I said previously in this debate, FE does lend itself to those with SEN because of the breadth of practical subjects that can be studied. I hope the Minister will appreciate how important it is to have those with SEN on the face of the Bill.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure I am not alone in finding that there are times when I come across something that makes me look at it and look at it again and think, “Well, that’s stating the blindingly obvious.” That was my thought when I read Clause 5(1), which says:

“The governing body of an institution in England within the further education sector must—


(a) from time to time review how well the education or training provided by the institution meets local needs, and


(b) in light of that review, consider what action the institution might take (alone or in conjunction with action taken by one or more other educational institutions) in order to meet those needs better.”


Certainly, any principal or governor of an FE college reading that would have reacted with genuine astonishment, along the lines of: “Wow, that’s a great idea—why didn’t I think of that?” Actually, any principal or governor of an FE college would have reacted with astonishment, probably with language that might politely be described as “unparliamentary”.

I am not going to claim that every one of more than 200 FE colleges in England are faultless in how they go about their business or in the quality of their teaching. They employ around 120,000 full-time equivalent people and have a key role in developing career opportunities, enhancing skills, creating future leaders, transforming lives and serving businesses.

Not satisfied with having dug themselves into a hole in the form of Clause 5, the Government and the DfE then managed to dig even deeper with their attempt at an explanation for this clause in the Bill’s policy summary notes. On page 11, they ask themselves the question: “Why is legislation needed?” They answer their own question:

“Creating a statutory duty will ensure that aligning provision with local needs is a priority for the governing body of the relevant providers, alongside their other statutory duties, and strengthens accountability for this aspect of their performance.”


I have read that two or three times, and it always reads, to me, like gobbledegook.

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So we seek to amend the Bill to ensure that Ofqual remains the sole body with sign-off powers, via the single statutory approvals gateway, regulating and accrediting all technical qualifications in future. This will maintain a clear line of responsibility and accountability to Parliament for all qualifications intended for public regulation, outside universities, in England. This amendment places the external quality assurance role that Ofqual currently exercises on to a statutory footing. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment, so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raises an issue that engaged us at Second Reading—namely, the relationship between Ofqual and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education—and was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on a previous group. The matter of regulation is causing concern in the awarding sector, because it is not clear who has authority for end-point assessment for apprenticeships, and it is surely not desirable for there to be any confusion over which of these two bodies has most power, nor where the expertise lies.

The Minister tempted me to come in on the previous group and I nearly came in after her—but I knew I had the opportunity to speak on this group, so I thought I might as well save my thunder.

My noble friend Lord Addington referred to my connections with City & Guilds. I remember that it was the employers who set the curriculum, because they have always been involved with vocational workplace qualifications. Of course, there was heavy regulation of everything we did but, over many years, both BTEC and City & Guilds have developed a reputation for standards and quality. They are understood and trusted by employers, and BTEC has the added cachet that it is accepted by universities, in many cases, because of the academic rigour of its awards. Part of the work I did for many years at City & Guilds was talking to universities to see where they could accept City & Guilds vocational qualifications for their degree programmes. There were certainly some, in engineering and areas such as that, who were prepared to accept that people who had the right level of City & Guilds qualification had met the criteria for entry to a university programme. They are doing different things, by and large, so not many people went down that route, but it was possible. So this constant mention that employers are in control, as though it was something new, always concerns me, as it has been going on for over 100 years.

The noble Baroness also made a brief mention of copyright. I remember going through the Technical and Further Education Bill, which was cut short by the election, and having stunningly good amendments that were all of course dropped in the wash-up. The suggestion then was that the copyright of any of the awarding bodies would immediately be taken over by the Government. I objected strongly and said “You can’t do this. You can’t just assume the copyright of an organisation”. I got a phone call from the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, who asked me why I was objecting to his wonderful Bill. I said that it seemed to me outrageous that the Government could just take over the copyright of other organisations. He said, “Oh, I didn’t mean for that to happen at all”. I said, “Would you mind very much ringing up the department and telling them that?” I do not think he ever did, because nothing happened on it. But the issue of copyright is vital, because many awarding organisations earn income from the copyright of their qualifications.

Anyway, the noble Baroness very kindly sent us a chart of Ofqual and the institute, showing where they all were, and the complexity of it is absolutely mind-boggling—I am sure that a brighter soul than me would reckon that it is all very straightforward. The institute has responsibility for the curriculum, but Ofqual has end-point assessment. Ofqual provides advice to the institute with regard to the validity of technical education qualifications submitted for approval and the reliability of assessment, but the institute will be responsible for reviewing technical education qualifications to determine whether they continue to meet the criteria. This seems to be an incredibly complicated way of running these qualifications. However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, that it is obviously more appropriate that responsibility lies with Ofqual, which is an independent regulator, whereas IfATE is of course less independent, as a non-departmental public body.

We have no information about how IfATE’s approval fees would be regulated, how often the fees would be charged and how accurate the estimation costs are. Would the fees be per qualification, per sector, annually or for the lifetime of the qualification? That is not clear. There is a lot of obscurity around the setting up of these qualifications.

I find it very strange that, as has been mentioned, Ofqual has regulatory and approval responsibility for all vocational and technical qualifications apart from T-levels. I thought that T-levels were supposed to be the be-all and end-all of vocational qualifications, so why have they been split off into another body? I am afraid that I am a simple soul and I find this very complicated, so perhaps the Minister could enlighten us and clarify it all for us.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the external quality assurance of apprenticeships’ end-point assessment is a vital tool in ensuring that all apprentices receive a robust, high-quality assessment. In this amendment, we are now dealing with what is an Ofqual function. Ofqual does not set any curriculum for A-levels or GCSEs and neither would it, in our view, be the appropriate body to set any content for any level 3 or level 2 technical qualifications. It oversees the assessment process, seeing whether grading is fair and examinations are being run properly.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education introduced an external quality assurance framework in 2019 in order to bring consistency to the sector. Following this, the institute put the matter of external quality assurance out to public consultation between February and May last year. This resulted in the institute taking the decision that the EQA for most apprenticeship end-point assessments would transfer to Ofqual to bring further consistency and quality to the assessment of apprenticeships. This is Ofqual’s bread and butter: overseeing examinations.

There are a small number of exceptional standards—chartered surveyors, for instance—where an existing statutory regulator oversees entry to a profession. The best way to quality assure these standards is currently being worked through with those regulators. I would like to make it clear that the Office for Students must continue to provide EQA for integrated degree apprenticeships—because Ofqual does not have statutory jurisdiction over degrees and therefore cannot provide EQA for apprenticeships at that level.

I will specifically address the noble Lord’s suggestion that regulations under this proposed amendment must prohibit the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education from providing EQA. While the institute is stepping back from direct delivery of EQA, it is an employer-led organisation, working to develop apprenticeships that meet the needs of employers. It is right that it should continue to have responsibility for securing the quality assurance of apprenticeship assessment in order to retain an independent, impartial voice in the sector and to maintain clear focus on supporting employers to develop the right apprenticeship skills for the labour market.

Regarding the suggested six-month timing for the transfer proposed in the amendment, the pace of the EQA transition currently taking place from the institute and other EQA providers to Ofqual has been carefully planned to ensure the development of a balanced end-point assessment offer to continue to develop a high-quality apprenticeships system. The first phase of the transition is well under way and is focused on transferring the majority of standards that currently have the institute as the named EQA provider. This phase will conclude at the end of the year. The second phase is to transition to Ofqual the remaining standards that are externally quality assured by other EQA providers, excluding the standards that will be regulated by OfS and statutory regulators, as aforementioned. This will conclude at the end of September 2022.

The sector is made up of a great number of end-point assessment organisations of different sizes and natures, some covering single standards, some covering around 50 standards. To attempt to transition all these organisations and standards over to Ofqual in a six-month period would cause severe disruption in the sector and would negatively affect the apprentices’ experience. The proposed amendment would also place a great burden on universities, as under this amendment they would be required to be regulated by the OfS and Ofqual, rather than just by the OfS, as is currently the case. I hope I have set out that, as the successful transition of EQA is already under way, it would have a detrimental effect if we were to remove the institute from the process entirely.

In relation to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on fees, any future approach that is developed will be proportionate and take account of the operational costs of institute approval in the reformed landscape. This may differ across qualification categories and levels.

On this basis, and with the explanations and reassurances I have given, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel comfortable to withdraw her amendment.

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Can the Minister tell me that I am wrong to be worried? I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, once again, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Addington on special educational needs. I am sorry that we seem to have seen off all the Back-Benchers. It gets a bit lonely when you have only the Front-Benchers in these debates, but I hope that some of them will come back for the next group, because we value the contributions from those who are not on the Front Bench.

We on these Benches have long campaigned to ensure that initial teacher training encompasses awareness of special educational needs, and it is important that those training for further education should be fully aware. As my noble friend said, in some respects, it is more important for FE, because those with special educational needs may well be drawn to the provision within FE, which tends to be more practical and less academic. So the amendment is a no-brainer.

We should ensure that all FE students, whatever their educational needs, have every opportunity to learn skills appropriate to their abilities. Some special educational needs are quite difficult to identify, so teachers need to be trained to spot them.

My noble friend is particularly expert in dyslexia, and I remember, years and years ago, when I was at school, a girl at school was always labelled as thick. She went on to be a very successful businesswoman, having been diagnosed late in life with dyslexia, but her school days were pretty miserable, because she could not do the things that everybody else could and the teachers thought she was just not trying. We had a pretty untrained set of teachers, obviously.

This is a very important amendment, and I hope that the Minister will see that it deserves serious consideration.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to signify our support for Amendment 62 and commend the passion with which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, spoke, as he unfailingly does on matters relating to those with special educational needs.

The Government must surely accept this amendment because page 30 in the Bill’s policy summary notes, under the heading, “What is the Government doing to support the teaching of SEND in FE?”, states:

“The government is also funding an in-service training grants programme to support those training in-service to teach maths, English and SEND. In Academic Year 20/21, 24% of bursaries and 73% of grants were awarded were for teaching SEND.”


Therefore, to add the requirement that SEND awareness training is included is an entirely logical follow-on to that. However, I await with interest the ingenious, perhaps even tortuous, argument that the Minister’s officials have crafted for her to tell us that it is not really necessary. That really would be unfortunate. I say, in a relatively gentle way, that the Government need to understand that accepting that something they have drafted could possibly be improved or even complemented is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength.

My main concern regarding Clause 16 is its intention. It seems to fit the pattern of the excessively hands-on and controlling position that the Government are adopting in many aspects of education. It is already happening with regard to initial training for schoolteachers. The policy summary notes address this question, again on page 30, under the heading, “How do these proposed changes align with the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) market review for school teachers?” It answers its own question:

“The government is not seeking to replicate the reforms taking place in the schools ITT system ... However, officials within the Department for Education are working together to ensure a coherent relationship between our reforms in the two sectors”—


hence my fears and those of many others in the teaching profession at school and college level.

The Government may protest that there is no connection between the two but, as politicians, we naturally do not believe in coincidence. Perhaps the Minister can explain just what is meant by

“a coherent relationship between our reforms in the two sectors”

because there is uproar in the teaching profession and among those who provide teacher education at the Government’s highly controversial and potentially damaging proposals for the review of initial schoolteacher training which are currently out for consultation.

On the FE ITT system, the policy summary notes say:

“The government believes that the FE ITT system could be much better than it is”.


Can the Minister enlighten noble Lords about the evidence for that? There is no clamour in the sector for such a change. I have to say that, again, that Clause 16 smacks of an increasingly voracious government appetite for centralisation and control, with Great Smith Street the control centre. If the Minister believes she can gainsay that impression, I am sure I would not be alone among noble Lords in being very interested to hear it.

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[The Lord Bishop of Durham [V]]

My Lords, I particularly want to support Amendment 63, but also the others in the group. Just last month, in June 2021, the DfE itself published a report, Student Mental Health and Wellbeing, based on research done before the pandemic. It points out that 96% of institutions ask their students about their mental health but only 41% ask them about their general well-being. It also notes that only 52% of universities would say that they have a “dedicated strategy” for the mental health and well-being of their students. So the DfE’s own report, from last month, highlights that there is plenty of work to be done on universities having proper, dedicated strategies around mental health and well-being—particularly on the well-being side.

We know that Covid has highlighted the issues further, particularly around loneliness. Just today, the head of the OfS, Nicola Dandridge, spoke of her concern that more than half of the student population feels that their mental well-being has not been supported enough this year. I have not had time to explore her comments more fully, but it is notable that she made them today, when we are having this debate.

Well-being has to be covered by a whole range of services, and I note here the value—which you certainly cannot put into legislation—of universities having chaplaincy teams. During the pandemic, the chaplaincy team at Durham University was given an award for being the most important group of people in the university over the last few months. In the University of Sunderland, the vice-chancellor decided that the chaplaincy team should be awarded extra money so that it could do further work in the future, on the basis of how significant its input had been to student well-being during this time. So when we look at mental health and well-being, we need to look at counselling services and all sorts of other support, but it should include the work and role of chaplaincies.

I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, has raised a really important point in suggesting that this is put in the Bill. The overall well-being of students really matters as much as their academic outcomes. This needs to be known, seen and observed. I also support the amendments, and particularly their probing nature, of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the intent of those of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, to look at other social outcomes. They are significant and should be in the Bill.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 63 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is rapidly becoming my noble friend at this rate. I support all the others in this group, which are concerned with the mental health of students, well-being, student outcomes and widening participation.

Because of this Committee stage, I was sorry to miss a meeting this afternoon on lifelong learning, which was sponsored by Graeme Atherton, a brilliant champion of widening participation. He has done more than most to promote access to higher education, through such wonderful programmes as Aimhigher, which introduced so many non-typical students to university, with some inspirational results, before having its funding withdrawn—such is life.

The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, bear witness to their tireless support for disadvantaged students and those suffering from poverty of family, opportunity or aspiration. Of course, the pandemic has caused additional stress for our students, who have been very badly affected in many cases by being locked up and not being able to have classes or socialise in the way that they might have expected.

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that universities should not be penalised if they accept young people with lower school exam results if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, where they have actually achieved a great deal just to get the results they have. I think we should bear that in mind. Of course we have to ensure the quality of our great institutions, but, at the same time, we have to make sure that our students are properly cared for and have all the opportunities that they can.

I think this is a very worthwhile set of amendments, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in responding to this excellent debate I will also introduce my Amendments 65, 66, 67, 68 and 70—albeit, I apologise, too late for the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, whom I thank for her support. Together, my amendments are designed to draw out from the Government the approach that is to be taken regarding regulating higher education providers, especially on quality and standards.

To start, despite lots of research, I still do not know whether this Bill will change the powers that the Office for Students has at the moment. We are told that this is a technical clause required

“To put beyond doubt the Office for Students’ ability to regulate in relation to minimum requirements for quality.”


But can the Minister tell us: is this Bill needed to ensure that the OfS can keep doing what it does now without risk of legal challenge? Or is it to enable it to do something different, for which it needs extra powers, and if so, what?

The OfS currently applies a series of conditions, in categories A to E, for an institution to be registered. The B conditions focus on quality and standards, and I am most interested in B3, which says that

“The provider must deliver successful outcomes for all of its students”,


measured against minimum standards for student continuation, completion and graduate careers. My Amendment 65 says that the OfS must consult the HE sector before determining those minimum standards. We had a general OfS consultation, which closed in January, but no response has yet been issued. Another is due any day now on most of the B criteria, but the key one—these B3 metrics—will not be consulted on until much later in the year. Given the concerns we have heard about the direction of travel, and since that consultation will take place after this Bill becomes law, it is really important that it is full and meaningful. It needs to be clear on what metrics are proposed, how they will be measured, where the data will come from and how they will be applied. It should provide the evidence for any metric being advanced as a proxy for quality, assess the impact of any proposed move away from benchmarking, and be transparent about how the baselines will be set. Are they objective standards which, in theory, all institutions could meet, or are they designed to cull the lowest performers, irrespective of absolute scores? Can the Minister give us some assurances on this? Can she tell the House how Parliament can express a view on these hugely important decisions which will be taken by the OfS?

Amendment 66 is designed to flush out the Government's intentions on contextualisation. I understand that Ministers do not want different outcome standards for different groups—this is a probing amendment; I am not proposing a new scheme—but there are clearly differences in student outcomes between groups which reflect prior experience, advantage or the lack of it, or their current circumstances, rather than academic ability. I shall not repeat the excellent points made by my noble friend Lady Morris and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on the whole issue of contextualising data, but I look forward to hearing the Minister explain why we are legislating to enable the OfS to refuse to collect that data.

Amendment 68 would ensure that the OfS’s student outcome measures do not jeopardise the goal of widening participation for students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups—a matter of concern to many in higher education. MillionPlus points out that

“if you remove the ability to contextualise, you also remove the ability to assess”

value-added—or distanced travelled, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said. MillionPlus also points out that setting minimum thresholds on student outcomes while removing any need for benchmarking

“sits incongruously in a Bill designed to diversify access to higher education and boost mature and part-time study.”

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Layard (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 76. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, has argued so powerfully, we are, as a nation, very good at producing graduates and pretty bad at producing skills for the other 50%.

I start with a quite extraordinary statistic: if you ask what proportion of all the 18 year-olds in our country are not in any form of education or work-based learning, the answer is 30%. That is an absolutely incredible situation, and it really is time that we addressed that problem. It is a problem for our national productivity and, of course, it is a big problem for the subsequent incomes of those people. If we are looking for priorities, which is what this is all about, the central aim of post-school policy development must now be to deal with that problem and get more of our young people up to level 3—or at least level 2.

The lifetime skills guarantee is of course a very welcome proposal towards that end—giving a first level 2 or 3 to everyone, free of charge, irrespective of age—but it should be put into law. If the Government are serious about it, they should have no reservations on that point. That is covered in the first bit of this amendment. However, the more substantial issue, to which my noble friend Lord Adonis referred, is how to deliver that guarantee. Unless the places are there, there is no point in a person feeling that they have the right to free education if, when they look around, they see nothing that they like. They would not, in effect, have a right—they have that right only if the money automatically follows their choice.

What we are saying to the Government—I hope that the Minister will reflect on this—is that there is actually no chance that the guarantee can be delivered through the existing system of contracting with the colleges. In that system, each college has a capped budget, the size of which it negotiates annually with the Education and Skills Funding Agency. That agency, in turn, has a capped total budget, which, currently—even taking into account recent increases—is half of what it was in 2010. So that is what our present funding system enables us to do for the other 50%. We can do whatever we will, but, unless we do something about that funding system, we will not be able to deliver the right to a lifetime skills guarantee.

The contrast between what faces those people and what faces people going down the academic route is extreme because if you go to university or sixth form, the money of course follows you automatically. That is why our academic education is among the best in the world. It is difficult to think of anything more completely unjust in our social arrangements in this country than the comparative treatment of people going down the academic route and of those wanting to go into further education.

We have to dynamise the system of further education in the same way that we have dynamised universities: by enabling any institution that thinks that it can attract the people who are entitled to put the course on, knowing that the money will automatically follow. It is very nice that we have the “lifetime skills guarantee” expression because we can say that any student who is accepted by a college should automatically be funded for exercising their guarantee. What is a guarantee if the money does not come with it? It should be a guarantee of free education, funded in an automatic fashion. We want our colleges to lead in transforming the skills of our non-graduates, which, as I say, is more important than any problem relating to graduates. Let us take the colleges off the leash and pay them for any eligible student who they can attract—that is the only way that we can implement the lifetime skills guarantee. I hope that the Minister can reflect on how that guarantee could be implemented in any other way.

I turn finally to apprenticeships. Again, as many noble Lords have already said, we have to be clear about what the really big problems are, as opposed to other things that would also be desirable but are not of the highest priority. As I said at the beginning, the biggest problem is that so many young people are entering adult life without any proper training—we absolutely have to address that. The key moment occurs before people are 25; we must do better for people at that stage. To put that in context: 30% of people have had no form of work-based training or education. This is a problem of opportunity and of places. We are still trying to get the figures, but we know that there is huge excess demand from young people for places on apprenticeships. There are people who want apprenticeships and cannot get them. Finding a mechanism to generate those places is absolutely critical. At the Youth Unemployment Committee, to which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred, we constantly have evidence of this huge excess demand. We are trying to get the numbers; we do not have them yet, but everyone says that that demand is there.

We can only solve that problem if we use the apprenticeship levy to generate those places. One could imagine all kinds of subtle ways to incentivise employers to spend the apprenticeship money on younger people, but I do not think that they would work. That is why this very simple rule—two-thirds of apprenticeship funding going to people under the age of 25—is the most direct approach. Of course, it has to be for people taking apprenticeships at levels 2 or 3 because, if we said “under 25” but not the second part, we would see that they would want to fund degree and graduate apprenticeships. They would want to recruit bright young graduates and not bother about the other half of the population.

I stress the need to focus not just on the places but on the money for the places, because places for younger people are cheaper than those for the older people. As the amendment says, two-thirds of the money should go to people starting at levels 2 or 3 when aged under 25. Of course, I am very keen on degree and graduate apprenticeships but, if employers want to do those, they should come from the other third of the money or their own resources.

This whole amendment is about how to generate the places for young people to get the proper start in life that we want them to have and, thereby, earn a decent wage and contribute to national productivity. Such things do not happen just by saying, “You’ll have a guarantee”; you have to put it into law, as the other amendment also says, and then have proper ways of funding both the guarantee and the apprenticeship.

It is true that the Government now have the right aspirations. We are in a new situation with huge opportunity, and the skills White Paper absolutely heads in the right direction, but this amendment is, in a sense, a test of how serious the Government are about actually realising their admirable aspirations. I hope that the Minister will find the amendment helpful.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 80 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but I also strongly support Amendment 76 from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, and the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Rooker. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Layard; we are among some of the giants of the education world here.

If the Government are serious about wishing to reskill and upskill the nation, lifelong learning is an absolutely essential component. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that “lifelong” is the word we are more used to—but I agree with him that we should sort out before we go much further whether it is lifelong or lifetime. As we shall discuss later, adults are much less likely to wish to take on repayable loans, so the right to free education up to level 3 is a very positive measure.

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Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

77: After Clause 25, insert the following new Clause—
“Offence to provide or advertise cheating services
(1) A person commits an offence if the person provides, offers to provide or arranges for a third person to provide an academic cheating service to a student enrolled with a further, higher or post-16 education provider on—(a) a course of study at such an education provider in the United Kingdom, or(b) an overseas course of study provided at such an education provider in the United Kingdom, and the academic cheating service is for commercial purposes.(2) A person commits an offence if the person advertises or causes an advertisement to be published, either directly to a student enrolled with a further, higher or post-16 education provider, or through an intermediary.”

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I bring apologies from my noble friend Lord Storey, who is in foreign parts but assured us, before he went, that he would be able to get connectivity and come in and join us on this and other amendments. He self-evidently is not here, so my noble friend Lord Addington and I will try desperately hard to fill the gap he leaves.

I support this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. He has been assiduous in his efforts to tackle cheating in all its forms. His research has resulted in a “Panorama” programme following foreign student colleges that collected large sums of money to accredit bogus students with qualifications, which were awarded by reputable awarding organisations that had taken their eye off the ball in their scrutiny of candidates and processes. It was horrifying to see how much money changed hands by falsifying student records and buying certificates with no shred of competence. We saw classes of foreign students who could barely say their names in English, with no language or professional ability, yet who, on payment, could obtain genuine certificates with utterly false credentials. Those awarding bodies have now been tasked and scrutinised, and had their processes significantly tightened.

This amendment is aimed at those who seek to part students from their money in return for validation that has no reality. Cheating has become easier in the technological age. It was more arduous when you had to go to a library and photocopy material—literally cut and paste—but there are those with money and very few brains who aspire to qualifications. It is in the interests of those of us who admire our education system that cheating is stopped, at all costs. If this is not already an offence, it should be. This amendment will ensure that those who seek to cheat in this way can be taken to task and it surely has a place in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I speak on the subject of cheating partly because I have a son who is an academic and I know what agonies this creates for conscientious tutors. I offer two insights. First, cheating at universities and elsewhere is made much easier by the prevalence of coursework, which means there could have been an increase during Covid, to add to our woes.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, rightly said, it is easier in the technological age. The safest thing is to base assessments on exams in person and, if that is not possible, to have tight turnaround times for papers, because that makes cheating harder. The penalties should also be clear—whether being chucked out of university or made to do another year—and whether they apply to essays, which are under examination with this amendment, or to exams only.

Secondly, it is an international problem. An amendment banning services in the UK, which this seeks to do, will just move these services overseas. It is an important issue and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how it is best tackled. I very much thank those who have brought the amendment to the House today.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that positive reply, and those who supported the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for their contributions—and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, not only for filling in the gaps but for her substantial research and powerful reasons for legislating on these matters. I come back to the point made by my noble friend Lord Addington about how cheating can completely blight your future career, making you open to blackmail and the like.

I sort of accept the reasons that the Minister gave for not accepting the amendment, particularly with her encouragement that my noble friend’s Bill may receive government backing, because I do think this is an incredibly important issue. We are at risk of undermining our higher education and further education systems if cheating continues at this incredible level. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 77 withdrawn.

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[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Watson has made a compelling argument for enhanced, nationally recognised and organised credit transfer arrangements. I do not want to repeat the points he made except to note that, in the context of the move towards more degree-level apprenticeships, the issue of credit transfer becomes particularly important because many, indeed, probably the generality of students starting out on apprenticeship programmes leading to degree-level qualifications will start in further education colleges.

Many of these have not conventionally offered higher education but are good apprenticeship education providers and will start providing the level 3 and 4 education which can lead to degree-level apprenticeship programmes. If we want to encourage more students through the apprenticeship route and for them to regard this as something they can progress to degree level, the issue of credit transfer is going to become a still more significant one in the education system in future years. The points my noble friend made are especially compelling.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment seems such a good thing, but I really doubt whether all the administration it involves is actually necessary or desirable. Governments are not always very keen on looking at what happened in the past, whether it succeeded and the reasons why not if it did not. Of course, that is never a reason not to try again, but it does seem pointless to spend time and money re-enacting things for which the criteria have not changed. This is one of the reasons I deplore the crash introduction of T-levels with no regard for other vocational initiatives—I am thinking of diplomas in particular— that were introduced unsuccessfully without consideration of past mistakes. I am afraid I do have quite a long memory of such things.

In the olden days of polytechnics, all accreditation was carried out by CNAA, the Council for National Academic Awards. In theory it should have been a very simple matter for students to transfer credits between organisations, as obviously there was a level playing field for credits. In practice, very few students ever transferred from one institution to another, and the mechanisms for doing so were by no means straightforward.

In 1992, polytechnics disappeared and were reincarnated as universities. For some this was not a great advantage: Oxford and Hatfield polytechnics, for instance, had tremendous names and becoming universities was certainly not initially a help to their well-earned reputations.

I was working for City & Guilds in the early days of national vocational qualifications in the 1980s. The Government gave permission for a large number of awarding organisations—some with pretty dubious credentials—to award NVQs. All awarding organisations had to agree to recognise any units awarded by any awarding organisation. City & Guilds, as the premier vocational awarding organisation, was not delighted by this, but conformed by spending a great deal of time and money ensuring that its highly protected accreditation mechanisms could accommodate units from another organisation. In practice, this arduous work proved largely unnecessary. There were few, if any, requests to transfer between awarding bodies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, this issue goes back some time. When I was a Minister, there was an issue about whether voluntary-aided schools—of which a high proportion are Catholic, as my noble friend says—could maintain the protections afforded to them in terms of their designated religious character and appointment of governors with a religious background and associations, and so on, as they transfer to academy status. The case he makes is overwhelmingly powerful. At the time there was also the issue of whether we would allow sixth-form academies at all because, in the original academy conception, until there was a change in the law, that was not possible. Now sixth-form academies are possible and, as my noble friend said, there are quite a few of them. Indeed, there is one just 200 yards from your Lordships’ House, Harris Westminster, a sixth-form academy sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, and Westminster School. It is an outstandingly successful institution, right by St James’s Park station. Noble Lords will see the students going backwards and forwards every day. It is excellent and exactly the kind of institution that we want to encourage more of, so it seems perverse that it is not possible for a Catholic promotor, including promoters of existing sixth-form colleges, to take advantage of the status.

As my noble friend says, encouraging sixth-form colleges—both the Catholic Church and the Church of England have their own sixth-form colleges; the Church of England is of course a major educational promoter in its own right—to become part of multi-academy trusts seems a very worthwhile step. This seems a straightforwardly technical issue, which perhaps the Minister can resolve with the stroke of a pen.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I briefly add my support to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, which would ensure that any conversion to academy does not mean abandoning the religious affiliation of any colleges. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, this issue goes back a long way. He mentions only Catholic schools, but I presume this would apply to other faith groups as well.

If we were starting from scratch, we might well decide to divorce education from religion, as many other countries do—the French seem to manage this quite successfully—but that is not where we are. Churches and other faith organisations have long played a very significant part in the lives of our students, to the very great advantage of young people and the country.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I am always loath to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who generally is a very good thing, but on this amendment I express long-felt reservations that universities should not be rated on the earnings of their graduates. Indeed, they should not really be concerned about the earnings of their graduates.

This is partly because I graduated from Oxford at 21 and immediately married a fellow student and RAF officer, which I never regretted. But we moved 24 times in the next 30 years, so it was impossible for me to have a career. I drifted into teaching, but I could not find any school to employ me. The minute any of them got a whiff that I might be an RAF wife, they lost interest—which was quite often. So I worked as a clerical officer, a filing clerk and a copy typist. That was the real low point of my career, but I was paid six bob an hour and it kept the wolf from the door.

We never had much money. My husband was promoted through nine ranks, each time at the earliest opportunity, but somehow the increased social commitments always took account of the pay rise. When I finally found a proper job, he lost his, when he was told at the 11th hour that it was utterly unacceptable for a commander-in-chief to have a working wife. When he refused to accept this last-minute and pointless condition, his appointment and career were cancelled overnight and a message hurriedly sent up the line to say that this ideal officer, it transpired, was totally unfit for high command because his wife had a job. So that did not go too well.

But I would hate Oxford to think I was a complete waste of space because I could not earn money. I did copious amounts of voluntary work as a mother, an RAF wife, a welfare counsellor, a CAB adviser—even a reluctant unpaid organist, and anything else that would have me. One of my contemporaries went into the Church and has always had a low salary—but why should Oxford be penalised for a wonderful woman vicar?

My mother was awarded a First from Cambridge in the 1930s, but was never allowed to graduate, because it took Cambridge until 1948 to acknowledge its women students as undergraduates. She had to give up her Civil Service job as soon as she was married—so was her degree a waste of space too? My daughter went to teach in Lesotho when she graduated and was paid £5 a week. Should Cambridge have been penalised because of her lack of income?

Women still bear the lion’s share of caring for children, parents and others, and still generally have lower incomes than men, but the amount they contribute to society is no less—some might argue considerably more—so why take it out on universities? Please can we disassociate high earnings from worthwhile degrees? Today’s women have a much better chance of combining family and career, which was impossible for my mother and pretty impossible for my generation—certainly for diplomatic and military wives. But many of us have contributed to society in non-financial and non-quantifiable ways. I hope that universities might value and be valued for that, and not be penalised on our account. Many graduates choose to try to make the world a better place, rather than earn shedloads of money.

On universities not communing with graduates, I would argue that universities are increasingly doing their level best to get hold of their graduates. I would like to think it is because they are genuinely interested in their welfare—and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned that they could contribute by tutoring and so on, which is good—but I have a feeling that they mainly want to get hold of their graduates to tap them for money.

This amendment is multifaceted, but I regret the suggestion that universities should be recognised for the earnings that their graduates manage to find in life. I do not think that should be the case.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for introducing this amendment and all the noble Lords who have spoken. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for sharing her experiences just then—horrific though one of them was. I am sure Oxford is duly proud of her now, and so it should be. Like her, I am not sure who should be blamed for my career—the institution where I did my first degree, the one that offered me a mid-career MBA or the one where I did my more recent theological training. Anyway, none of them can be suitably blamed.

In general, I am a big fan of data—any data, but especially robust data at scale. I like it being used to inform policy-making and am happy for it to be there as part of a feedback loop. So anything that can help universities get a richer picture of what happens to their graduates after they leave is probably a good thing—but that does not necessarily mean I want a straight line from that to the way the Government fund or regulate them.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I will say a few concluding remarks before the Minister speaks. As I look around the Chamber, there are numerous former Secretaries of State and schools Ministers, including myself, and many others who have grappled with skills and post-16 education over a number of years. Why are we back here again? It is because, frankly, there is still a major issue and a major problem. This is one thing all of us want to do something about and yet we grapple with the fact that whatever we do does not seem to work in the way we want it to. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned his maiden speech 35 years ago when he talked about special educational needs with reference to this. I have heard many noble Lords speak on this issue and some of the things being said now could have been said by them decades ago.

I have one simple question and some comments for the Minister. The Government are attempting to grapple with a problem that has bedevilled our education system and our country for decades, so why will it be different this time? Why will it work in a way that it has not under other Governments—despite the best intentions—this time? There has been some progress. there are powers, as my noble friend Lord Adonis pointed out, ad nauseam for the Government to use should they choose to. So, why will it work?

This is a crucial issue. I was at Thales and Leonardo yesterday. They have graduate skills programmes and apprenticeships, but they struggle to fill them. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, talked about his own company. They cannot fill the vacancies, yet there are people who need skilled jobs, and they cannot be matched. Everybody knows it is a problem. Everybody knows it is an issue. Why has it not been resolved? It is not through lack of intent, desire or passion; it just has not worked.

This debate is crucial because the vehicle the Government are going to use is local skills improvement plans. The Government are saying, “Through our local skills improvement plans, this time it will be different. This time it will work. We won’t need to have another skills Bill in three, four or five years’ time, because this time it will work.” I say this to the Government: if they turn their backs on some of the amendments being put forward by all sides of this House today, whether they be on creativity or special needs or the amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and others, the Government—whichever Government it is—will be back in two, three or four years’ time and the same debates will be replayed.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, must be sitting there wondering. I remember talking to him goodness knows how many years ago. I remember talking to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, when he was my MP, about these sorts of things. He has been saying it for decades in his own constituency to his own schools: we have a skills shortage. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, has been saying, “What’s happened with technical education?” The fundamental question for the Minister is: why will these local skills improvement plans work, when they did not in whatever guise they were in in the past and, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, the present? Why will these work? Why will they make a difference? Why do they mean that we will not be here again in a few years’ time?

Amendment 11, in the name of my noble friend on the Front Bench, is fundamental. Why on earth would you have a local skills improvement plan that does not include local authorities, the mayors or all the providers? Why would they not—unless it is the Government’s view, which it should not be, that local authorities, the mayors, or the other things mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, are an impediment to it? If the Government are really saying, “The local authorities are in the way, we want them out of the way and we’re going to do it without them,” that is is ludicrous, and I do not believe that is what the Government think.

I finish with this; it is a plea from the heart. I was a careers teacher. I remember we had women into schools and engineering buses coming round. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bird, has spent decades trying to get people into creativity. We cannot get people. We are crying out for lorry drivers, bricklayers, and graduate skills. Our country, our Government and our education system have failed. There have been improvements and there has been progress, but it has been so slow. I do not want to be here in five or 10 years’ time having the same debates and discussions again.

So, I say to the Minister: why will it be different this time? Why will local skills improvement plans work when others have not? I say to the Minister, who I know listens and takes all her responsibilities incredibly seriously, that Amendment 11 is one example and is fundamental, but so are many of the other amendments noble Lords across this House have tabled. If the Government do not listen to them, we will be back in five years’ time debating another such Bill, and none of us wants that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly, because we have spent a long time on this very important group of amendments. I added my name to Amendment 20, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to ensure collaboration between the Departments for Education and for Business, and local government. Of course, this is hugely important, because there is little point in encouraging students into work-based qualifications if there are no jobs for them to fill either locally—which is where the local government people come in—or nationally, where the Business Department should have an overview of the skills the country needs. We desperately need a long-term coherent strategy.

I so agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird, in his plea for creativity in education. I have long espoused the idea that education should be fun and that every child should be encouraged in their own skills and interests to try to get confidence that they can contribute to society, and I do not think that our education system does that.

I also support Amendment 66, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, putting in a plea for vocational English and maths. GCSE English and maths are academic and are absolutely not appropriate for a whole load of people whose skills are more practical. The noble Baroness is quite right to press for support for those for whom literacy and numeracy are real difficulties and challenges. Without those basic skills, people have such difficulties in every aspect of their lives. They need all the help they can get from the nation and community. There are some really valuable amendments in this group, and I hope that the Minister sees that and takes them on board.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to this group of amendments. If I may, I shall start by responding to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and his challenge to the Government. I do not want to be flippant, but there is nobody in this Chamber more aware than me of just how many former Secretaries of State for Education and former Education Ministers I am surrounded by. In listening to the noble Lord, I was reminded of the time when I worked in the City, where I was advised early on that “This time it will be different” were the most expensive words for an investor—so I hear him.

In trying to answer the noble Lord’s point about why it will work this time, I am grateful to him for pointing out that this is an enormously difficult and challenging area. He will be aware that, in the White Paper, we set out a number of planks through which we will try to address the entrenched issues that he raised. LSIPs—I think that by this stage in the debate I am allowed an acronym—are an important plank, and our reform of technical and vocational qualifications is another, along with how further education is funded in this country. I shall come on to the points that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, raised about accountability, and the fact that we need to stay honest and keep checking how this works in practice, if necessary course-correcting to make sure that it delivers what the House resoundingly wants it to deliver. That is also an important part of it, albeit in future. So I thank the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity to set that out.

I turn to the detail of the amendments, and first to Amendments 8 and 9 from my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on consideration of skills deficiencies in specific fields when developing local skills improvement plans—skills described as absolutely crucial by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. I know that my noble friend brings enormous experience from boardrooms around the country to her amendment; she rightly raises the importance of digital skills and innovation. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has great insight into the issues surrounding the food system and biodiversity. We also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, about his very practical and relevant expertise and experience in engineering skills. These are all areas that the Government are actively trying to address in our skills policy. We have introduced, as noble Lords know, digital and other skills boot camps, covering construction and, most recently, HGV. So we are trying to be responsive to needs. On T-levels, we have introduced them recently in engineering and other related areas.

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[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

It can get worse, you know.

I am quoting from the documents so that they are on the record, so that when MPs see it they know I am not making this up. This is real stuff. Listen to this:

“We have recognised the need for additional qualifications alongside A levels and T Levels, including small qualifications designed to be taken as part of a study programme including A levels. However, we recognise that students who traditionally take”


things such as diplomas, two BTECs or extended diplomas

“tend to have achieved lower GCSE grades than their peers who progress onto A level study. They are also more likely to be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students, have SEND and have received free school meals.”

So the Government admit in this impact document that one of the consequences of this is that the following people will suffer: black, Asian and minority ethnic students, those with SEND and those who have received free meals. They will not actually have much of a chance of going to university. This is a disgraceful and shaming statement to put into any public document.

It gets worse: those from

“Asian and black ethnic backgrounds are more likely to be affected by the proposals, as they are particularly strongly represented on qualifications expected to no longer be available in the future.”

It then does disabled students and disability, with

“these students being more strongly negatively impacted by being unable to achieve level 3 in the reformed landscape.”

So disabled students are going to be disadvantaged in this reformed landscape. Scrap the blasted landscape! It is absolutely disgusting. Quite frankly, I am very ashamed that a Conservative Government have done this. What they are denying to lots of people—black, Asian, ethnic minority, disadvantaged and disabled students—is hope and aspiration.

The Conservative Party at the moment has been accused of abandoning lots of the things it has traditionally lived by. One of the things it has lived by is improvement in education. With respect to my own family, my grandfather left school at 12, and my father left elementary school at 16 and studied all sorts of other things to get on, leave and eventually become a senior civil servant. That is what Conservatives believe in—hope and aspiration—yet this denies hope and aspiration. As Browning said, the reach should exceed the grasp,

“Or what’s a heaven for?”

They are denied that reach. This is a shaming thing. I am very ashamed that a Conservative Government could do it, and all I can say to your Lordships is that I apologise for the Government.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I was going to say it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, but actually it is an extremely daunting task after that magnificent speech.

I shall speak to my Amendment 32 and add my support to Amendments 27, 28 and 33, to which I have added my name. But I support all the amendments in this group, which, as has been so powerfully set out by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, address a key concern over the Government’s policies on technical—or can I still say vocational?—qualifications.

I remind the House of my interests as a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation for which I worked for 20 years on practical, work-based technical and craft qualifications. BTEC broke away from City & Guilds in the 1970s, originally separating the business from the technical as BEC and TEC, but then coming together to offer both types of qualifications, particularly but not exclusively for secondary schools and further education colleges. Over nearly half a century, BTEC has built a reputation which is recognised, understood and valued—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, respected—by candidates, employers and academia.

It would be an act of extreme folly and damage for the Government to undermine, let alone cease to fund, a set of qualifications which have had a profound influence on the work skills of the country, especially, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, pointed out, for disadvantaged groups, and especially at a time when the country needs all the skills it can muster. We need skilled people to replace all the skilled workers which Brexit has seen return to their countries of origin. Do you know, I do not remember seeing that in the Leave campaign materials: “Vote Leave and be deprived of all the skilled workers you need.” We have shortages of farm workers, HGV drivers and butchers. My grandfather was a butcher. He had no problems in those far-off days in encouraging young people into an essential and respected trade.

Successive Governments’ relentless focus on universities and academia has led to a generation believing that actually doing things is less worthy than thinking things. We must urgently work to address the academic superiority which has so beset this nation for generations.

This Government have invented T-levels. Previous Governments, academically minded, have tried to invent different sorts of vocational qualifications. We had NVQs, which were going to be the vocational qualification to end all vocational qualifications—they were brilliant. We had GNVQs, we had CPVE. I looked after CPVE for a while. It was a brilliant secondary school practical programme. It was done away with by the academic superiority, who said that it lacked intellect. We had diplomas. They were all designed to break through this country’s unwillingness actually to do and make things. T-levels are untried and untested and will pose real problems, particularly, as has been mentioned, in the work element.

In proposing those shiny new toys, the Government chose to ignore City & Guilds and BTEC, with well over a century of expertise. They need now to put their weight behind those schemes which are proven and to encourage candidates to work with colleges and employers to fulfil their potential and fill the skilled jobs which are so crucial to the country’s well-being, indeed to its survival as a 21st-century force for good.

I support all the amendments in this group. Mine insists that the institution must publish specified criteria before it can withdraw funding, or approval, from an existing qualification. That of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, insists on public consultation; that of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, promotes the combination of academic and vocational education; and that of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, also calls for public consultation and the consent of employer representative bodies. On all sides of the House, we express concern that the Government’s blinkered support for their own invention threatens to undermine all that has been good and valuable in the past.

I wish the Minister well in her new post and hope that her own academic background will enable her to see just how important it is that we protect all that has been good and successful in the vocational field and support both BTEC and City & Guilds qualifications, which have been the bedrock of work-based skills for so long.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak extremely briefly, otherwise I think we will lose the amendments that we want to support. I declare an interest, because I have assisted Pearson’s with its consultation, including attending workshops chaired by the former Conservative Skills and Apprenticeships Minister, Anne Milton.

I have never met anyone outside the DfE who thinks it a good idea to do away with BTECs. I have not met anyone who thinks it impossible to promote the quality and worth of T-levels without having to demonstrate that they must do away with, defund or have a hard stop on BTECs and associated general qualifications. It is perfectly feasible to square this circle, and that is why I have put my name to all the amendments before us. I thank my assistant, Joanna Firth, who has been liaising with noble Lords and those outside who are campaigning on this critical issue.

It would be a great shame if—perhaps I may just refer to myself here—ageing Peers did not actually protect the interests of the young people we so often talk about, the vocational qualifications and drive for good-quality vocational opportunity that we so often talk about on the back of the Augar report and beyond: if we did not tonight help the Government to help themselves. The new ministerial team will need time to absorb what is being put in front of them and what they have inherited from their predecessors. The civil servants have worked extremely hard on this aspect, including in the Bill, but—I say with some temerity —they need to avoid the syndrome I found all those years ago, which is that once people have got on a trajectory, they cannot find a way of getting themselves off it. Tonight, we have the opportunity of helping both officials and Ministers to get themselves off what could be an absolute disaster. It is not often that I offer to help the Conservative Party out of a hole, but on this occasion, it matters. If a quarter of a million-plus young people are denied a route to a good qualification simply on an ideological whim, it would be a great shame not just for them but for our economy and our nation.

At this moment, we have never needed training in vocational qualifications more; we have never needed more opportunity to succeed outside A-levels. We know that; we know the gaps; we can feel them; we have seen them in the past month, not just at petrol pumps but on the shelves, in abattoirs and other key areas, including in the steel industry in my city and beyond. We need to support T-levels as a really good opportunity to develop quality, but not position them against good quality, high-level vocational BTEC qualifications. If T-levels are good, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and my noble friend on the Front Bench said, they will stand on their own merits.

An interesting document was circulated for this evening’s debate. I shall quote only two bits of it. It is very interesting, as was the document to which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred, published on 14 July and placed in the public sphere on 15 July. Here is a question for the Government.

“Why are you defunding qualifications when we don’t yet know if T Levels will be a success?”


This is the answer:

“The government is committed to ensuring that T Levels are accessible to all”—


I stress, all—“young people”. But of course, they are not, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, spelled out. If you have to get a particular GCSE at level 6 or above to be able to take part in them, those who currently get levels 4 and 5 and go forward to BTEC are disqualified. We are talking here about tens of thousands of young people.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I think there has been a regrouping; I was about to speak on an amendment that seems to have disappeared from here. I have added my name to Amendment 45A from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which is still in this group, and of course I entirely endorse what my noble friend Lord Storey said about the importance of the skills wallet.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, is on lifelong learning. Of course, we would much rather see the support for this as grants, rather than loans, to attract adults with financial obligations that deter them from accruing more long-term debt—particularly if it is to encourage their own learning. The amendment is designed to monitor how well the lifelong learning arrangements are working. We particularly wish to see how restricting funding for those studying for an equal or lower-level qualification than one they already hold is impacting the nation’s skills level.

Changes in the world of work mean that many people who already have a level 3 qualification, if they are made unemployed and need to retrain, will need to be able to study for a subsequent qualification at this level or below. The lifetime skills guarantee extended the entitlement beyond those aged under 25 to all adults, but only to a limited list of level 3 qualifications and only for those who do not already have one. It is vital that adults are able to reskill at a lower level in a skill area different from the one already mastered, if that will enable them to gain employment.

This really important amendment calls for the Secretary of State

“to publish an annual report on the impact on re-skilling of funding restrictions on those who wish to pursue a qualification at a level equivalent to or lower than one they already hold.”

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have also added my name to Amendment 45A from the noble Lord, Lord Watson. During the first day of Report, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, spoke about previous unsuccessful skills improvement initiatives and asked,

“why will it be different this time?”—[Official Report, 12/10/21; col. 1765.]

Why will the Government’s new skills system, as embodied in the Bill, work better than its predecessors? In my view, one of the answers will need to be a really vigorous and well thought-through approach to reporting, monitoring and evaluating the different elements of the strategy and how they all work together. The lifelong learning entitlement and the lifetime skills guarantee—I think I have those the right way around—are essential elements of the strategy but need to be transformed from slogans into realities. A crucial part of achieving that will be review, review, review.

I might prefer this amendment if proposed new subsection (1) ended slightly differently, to read, “a report on the impact on the overall levels of skills in England and Wales of all the provisions of this Act”, rather than confining itself to

“the rules regarding eligibility for funding for those undertaking further or higher education courses.”

In the meantime, I will content myself with supporting the noble Lord’s amendment as it stands—with its effect of ensuring that the impact of the equivalent or lower qualification rule is at least reviewed and assessed on a regular annual basis—while encouraging the Minister to look at beefing up further the process of reviewing the overall progress of the skills strategy, beyond the performance monitoring and review of designated employer representative bodies described in her letter to us.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which is self-explanatory, in a way. The Office for Students must have the powers to enforce its policies on student support and mental health and well-being. We must do our best to ensure that no student feels that suicide is the only way ahead. I have three student grandsons at different universities, and last year bore no relation whatever to the undergraduate experience of the past. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has said, the recent Covid measures meant that many students had a lonely year, with obvious welfare implications. Their welfare is surely of the utmost importance and should be one of the factors that is taken into account for the purpose of assessing universities.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for introducing his Amendment 47. I will comment on that before moving on to my Amendment 48 in this group. Even before the pandemic hit, health and welfare support systems in higher education were experiencing unprecedented demand. More students need more help with problems of increasing complexity. A DfE report in June, Student Mental Health and Wellbeing, found that almost all higher education institutions have been devoting more resources to supporting student mental health over the past five years but, in many cases, were still struggling to meet demand. The pandemic has exacerbated that considerably, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned, so I will not rehearse that.

It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and others on what the OfS can and does do about this. From memory, its new criteria on quality and standards relate to academic support only, rather than to specific non-academic support, but the Minister can explain how the OfS can otherwise work with universities on this.

It has offered some money, of course. It offered £6 million for innovative mental health support projects, although, when I looked at the small print, I found that half of that had to come from the providers doing the work. There are bits of money from outside. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, said recently in a Written Answer:

“As part of the mental health recovery action plan, the government has provided an additional £13 million to ensure that young adults aged 18 to 25, including university students, are supported with tailored mental health services.”


That is really good. I thought, “Hang on; is that all 18 to 25 year-olds?” At a rough guess that gives about £2.50 each, which may not go very far. I wonder whether the Minister thinks enough resources are going to support services in higher education. If not, do they need more external support or should this be coming from fee income?

The second issue is that, realistically, pastoral care in higher education institutions can only ever be a first line of support. It is important that the NHS is there for students who need more than that kind of help. I spoke this week to a senior person from an institution that takes the mental health of students very seriously, and she spoke of being left trying to support suicidal and seriously mentally ill students herself, because there were no mental health beds available and the local community team had little to offer, because it was so thinly stretched. I have also been told about a lack of inpatient beds or even outpatient support for students with severe eating disorders, leaving them with nowhere to go for help. I ask the Minister whether the DfE is working with the Department of Health to ensure that their services dovetail, so that there is adequate support in local NHS services for those students who need more help than university pastoral care can offer.

Amendment 48 in my name seeks to ensure that the way the Office for Students regulates higher education does not jeopardise the goal of widening participation. Noble Lords know that the OfS applies a series of conditions for a higher education institution to be registered, labelled A to E. The most hotly debated are the B conditions, which focus on quality and standards, and especially B3, which states:

“The provider must deliver successful outcomes for all of its students,”


which I always thought was rather ambitious, but they are tested against numerical measures.

The OfS has run two consultations in the last year and is about to start a third, which is specifically on the new metrics for student outcomes. They will presumably, although not necessarily, relate to the current metrics, which are about student continuation, completion rates of degrees and graduate careers. These metrics are controversial, because many in the sector worry that the Government are abandoning contextualisation in setting standards for higher education institutions. It is funny to push back on the noble Lord, Lord Lucas: to declare that everyone should be treated the same does not allow for there clearly being differences in student outcomes between groups that reflect prior experiences, advantages or current circumstances, rather than academic ability.

To take one simple example, we know from the official figures that mature students have lower completion rates. There can be perfectly good reasons for that, which may not relate to things in the gift of the institution at which they study. We would not want institutions that recruit more mature students to find that their outcome measure was not as good and then be deterred from doing so. That would be ironic for a Bill that is supposed to promote learning in later life and part-time study.

I raised this issue in Committee but I am sorry to say that the Minister said very little and really, I got no comment at all on it. The only way I could think of raising it was to table a specific amendment to say that the OfS could not measure outcomes in a way that could jeopardise widening participation for students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.

Clause 17(7) says that the OfS does not have to publish different minimum levels in relation to different outcomes by, for example, student characteristics, type of institution or course. That does not mean that the OfS has to apply flat standards across the board, but it clears the ground for it to do so at will. Many people in the sector worry that that might penalise institutions that serve disadvantaged groups or areas, or even deter outreach activity. Section 2 of HERA means that the OfS has to apply some proportionality, and therefore contextualisation, to any assessment, but can the Minister tell the House how it can do that fairly without any benchmarking? Because I got nothing in Committee, I am really hopeful that the Minister can at least give the House some assurance that the OfS should judge quality with regard to the impact on disadvantaged and underrepresented students. I hope she can reassure us on that front.

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If I may say so, the Bill is a valuable attempt to catch up to the pace of events. It is needed at a key moment. The careers of the next generations of people are not going to resemble the careers of the last. The acquisition of skills is essential from a personal point of view, while making sure that we have a workforce for skills is fundamental to our getting back to having a healthy, modern economy. I therefore urge the Government—having considered the debate in Committee, where we had quite a lot of support—to consider making a positive and content-filled response to the amendment and, I hope, accepting it.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 60 on the lifetime guarantee tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but I shall first say a few words about Amendment 50, which has been so eloquently introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke. It was good to go down memory lane with NVQs and YTS; I remember them well. I am concerned about subsection (1) in the proposed new clause, which requires funding for an approved course

“if he or she has not already studied at that level.”

We have put quite a lot of effort into trying to get funding for people to study at levels equal to or lower than qualifications they already have, if that is going to enable them to get into a new job. To restrict this to people who do not have a level 3 qualification might well be problematic. But oh, how much I agree with him about apprenticeships. In my mind, an apprentice is somebody starting out in work, not a middle manager doing an MBA. Having something to try to ensure that apprenticeship levy funding goes to young people is essential if that system is to work properly.

On Amendment 60, it is important that the lifetime skills guarantee is on a statutory footing if it is to have any impact at all. Both these amendments refer to courses up to level 3. It is important that we do not overlook qualifications at levels 1 and 2, because often they are the gateway to learning for people who have been put off education at an early age, as I have said before. Level 1 learners can be people who are encouraged for the first time to find learning accessible, enjoyable and fulfilling, when at school academic learning and GCSEs had been nothing but off-putting and a source of failure. That is something we need to be sure to support. Once such people discover that a national qualification is within their grasp and their ability, they will often find the confidence to continue to upskill and to gain employment in areas that they previously assumed were unobtainable. If the Government are serious about levelling up, they must start at the lowest levels. Amendment 60 would be a definite boost to that agenda, and I hope the Minister will look on it favourably.

[Lord Layard (Lab)]

I support Amendment 50, which could transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of our young people. Given the time, I shall make just four points. The problem is much bigger than most people, maybe myself included, have realised. In 2019-20, the proportion of all 18 year-olds who were in no form of education or work-based training was 30%. That 30% of the 50% not going to university are getting no education beyond the age of 17. This is completely extraordinary and shocking. What is the reason? It is that there simply are not enough places for these people to study and acquire skills compared with people going down the academic route.

The lack of places is almost entirely due to the completely different way in which those places are funded. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said, when young people go down the academic route, the funding automatically follows the student year by year, but for the other 50% the budget is simply set by the Treasury. It is capped in total and college by college. The current funding for 2021-22, including recent additions, is still less than half what it was in nominal terms in 2010. This is extraordinary and shows the failure of the system that this sort of thing can happen. It is difficult to think of any case of greater discrimination in any other aspect of our public life. I cannot think of any more extreme class-based discrimination than in that area.

What is the remedy? It is clear that the only approach which is fair to other 50% and which will adequately address the problem is to fund the other 50% the same way as the privileged 50% who go down the academic route—to make the money automatically follow these students. The proposal is that every student up to level 3 exercising the lifetime skills guarantee and taking an approved course—not just anything—should be automatically funded according to a national tariff. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, explained, that is the essential part of the first half of this amendment.

The second half relates to apprenticeships. When I was very young, I worked for the Robbins committee. It established the principle that there should be enough places for anybody who qualified for a place and who wanted to exercise access to it. That has always applied to higher education, ever since the Robbins report. It has never applied to the other 50%; they just have not been thought of in that way at all. That really has to change.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said, we now have a severe lack of apprenticeships for young people. There is huge, well-documented excess demand but supply is falling. The system is completely unresponsive and far too much of the apprenticeship money is being diverted to the over-25s. I will give two reasons why I think that is wrong. First, what is the key duty of any system of education and training? The first key duty is of course to get everybody off to a proper start. Good initial training is the central feature of any just, efficient system.

There is an extra, economic fact about the use of resources which I think is very relevant. The Department for Education’s own figures show that the benefit-cost ratio is much higher—in fact, double—for apprenticeships for the under-25s compared with those for the over-25s. For the sake of justice and efficiency, we have to redirect this money to an important degree back to the under-25s.

I would have thought this was a central proposal for any levelling-up agenda. We have a problem which is a major cause, almost the main cause, of our low national productivity per head. It is also a major cause of the spread of low incomes among the lower part of the workforce. If we are looking for items for a levelling-up agenda, surely this should be near the top.

I hope that as many noble Lords as possible will support this amendment and that the Government will also support it. If the Government find that they cannot support this proposal, I worry about the whole future of the levelling-up agenda.

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Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

67: After Clause 25, insert the following new Clause—
“Code of practice by Information Commissioner’s Office on data sharing in relation to post-16 education
(1) The Information Commissioner must prepare a code of practice for organisations which collect personal data for purposes connected to post-16 education, including the processing of applications for higher and further education courses.(2) The code must—(a) contain practical guidance in relation to the sharing of personal data in accordance with the requirements of data protection legislation;(b) contain such other guidance as the Commissioner considers appropriate to promote good practice in the sharing of personal data of students and potential students; and(c) have regard to children’s rights in the digital environment as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. 25.(3) Where a code under this section is in force, the Commissioner may prepare amendments of the code or a replacement code to reflect emerging technologies and changing needs of pupils, students and potential students.(4) In this section—“good practice in the sharing of personal data” means such practice in the sharing of personal data as appears to the Commissioner to be desirable having regard to the interests of data subjects and others, including compliance with the requirements of the data protection legislation; and“the sharing of personal data” means the disclosure of personal data by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making it available.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places a duty on the Information Commissioner to prepare a code of practice in relation to the sharing of personal data between students and others.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Storey has dashed off for his train and handed me a sheaf of papers on his amendment on data protection. I am quite good at speed reading but I do not think I am quite as good as all that, given all this material. However, this is an important amendment because data protection is important for students and pupils. It should be protected but the DfE does not have a good record. There is an ICO inspection report from February 2020 that comes out with such things as:

“There is no formal proactive oversight of any function of information governance, including data protection, records management, risk management”


and so on. The report says:

“The organisational structure of the DfE means the role of the Data Protection Officer (DPO) is not meeting all the requirements … There is no clear picture of what data is held by the DfE … The DfE are not providing sufficient privacy information”


and so it goes on. It is a very damning report.

The good news is that the Minister wrote a letter to my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, setting out all the steps that the Government intend to take, and my noble friend is very satisfied with their approach on this. Despite this very damning report about data protection at the DfE, which seems to be absolutely non-existent, there is some hope here. Whether the Minister will accept the amendment I do not know, but I beg to move.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for stepping in marvellously and introducing the amendment so confidently. It certainly seems, especially given the situation with the investigation that she describes, a pretty straightforward and simple way to address the issue, placing a duty on the Information Commissioner to prepare a code of practice in relation to the sharing of personal data. If the Minister is not going to accept this, perhaps she could tell us how instead the department intends to address these problems.

I would like to ask a little question. There have been concerns for some time that both practice and indeed legislation in education are loose in relation to data. Clause 11 makes provision to allow data sharing by and with Ofqual, the OfS and Ofsted as well as prescribed persons, and the provisions relate to technical education functions. Could that include students’ personal data? If so, for what purposes? How widely could “prescribed persons” be interpreted?

Can the Minister clarify whether the scope of Clause 11 extends beyond England? Although the institutions to which the new powers apply are all currently based in England, the people and institutions from which they will obtain personal data under those powers could presumably be at any educational setting across the UK within the scope of the Bill. What consideration has been given to the prescribed persons to whom the institution may pass on the data being based outside England in accordance with their own data-sharing powers?

These days students need and expect consistent controls across their data for collection, for use, for distribution and for destruction when it is no longer required for the lawful purposes for which it was collected. I am aware that institutions have also called for better guidance. Concerns have also been raised that the Bill does not preclude commercial use. Could the Minister comment on that?

Data is a valuable asset and it needs appropriate safeguards and a public interest test, so I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 67 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, but skilfully presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, seeks to place a duty on the Information Commissioner to prepare a code of practice in relation to the sharing of personal data by organisations that collect such data for post-16 educational purposes.

I thank both the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for bringing this issue to my attention. The Government agree that this is an issue that needs addressing, and we share both noble Lords’ aims for increasing assurances around the processing and sharing of personal data for learners and students in post-16 settings.

The department’s response to this issue is to set up an education sector certification scheme, with the support of the ICO, that would allow the department to set standards in a wide range of areas. This would cover the data protection needs of the whole education sector, not just the 16 to 19 age group covered by the Bill. We feel that a certification scheme, rather than a code, gives us flexibility to deliver elements when they are ready. We will not have to wait until all elements are complete, which allows us to be flexible when responding to priority needs. In addition, as technology and the law change, we are able to update specific standards without having to update a full code, allowing us to remain flexible to future changes.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, mentioned, I have written to both the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, detailing the department’s ambition and next steps in tackling this issue, which will include writing both to the ICO and to the ed-tech companies by the end of the year.

I am amused at the definition of “a little question” from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock; it was at least three little questions. If I may, I will write to her on the detailed points. Broadly, the thrust of her questions is that student data should be protected. The department continually keeps its processes and practices under review to ensure that we are taking all necessary steps to protect data, including updates to access controls, audit trails of data usage and reviewing risk as part of our data protection impact assessment. In relation specifically to this amendment, the proposed data certification scheme would formalise these controls across the sector. If I may, I will respond in writing to her other points.

I therefore hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, will consider withdrawing his amendment. I again place on record my thanks to him and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for bringing this to my attention.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I thank the Minister very much for her reply. We entirely agree that a certification scheme is better than a code and will provide more education expertise and focus and more transparency. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 67 withdrawn.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

I am asking the Government to think again about this, because they have never justified why a student should be disallowed from taking two funded qualifications. It is very discriminatory and will affect the future life chances of many young children, so I would like to hear what other Members from different parts of the House think about my amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 15A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who is a tireless champion for education, including technical education. He has personal credentials in that field. It is also a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker. These Benches entirely agree with his amendment, too.

I had submitted an amendment, which covered the same ground as that from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but I withdrew it to ensure we combined strength on this one to try to convince the Government of the extreme damage they are doing to young people’s prospects by their blinkered approach to T-levels. They have, after all, only just been invented. They have no track record and we have no way of knowing if they will really work. Okay, they have been developed by employers, but so has every work-based qualification in existence. BTECs were developed by employers, too; it is nothing new. Of course, employers are experts on employment, but qualifications need input from teachers at colleges and assessors at awarding bodies if they are to make sense.

Why do the Government not have a corporate memory? I was working for City & Guilds back when national vocational qualifications were introduced. Does anybody still remember NVQs? They were going to be the answer to the academic/vocational divide. They were going to break things down and ensure parity of esteem. Wow—they were great. There were six levels of attainment and employers were in the driving seat.

That was fine, but the retail sector decided that it did not need any outside help. All assessments were to be for real; there was to be no simulation. But two essential competences were dealing with fire and dealing with angry customers. The sector proudly printed umpteen boxes of the exciting new qualifications, until it was pointed out that, for anybody to pass them, many retail outlets would need to be burned down and many contented customers would need to have their feet stamped on to be angry enough to meet the requirements. Sadly, the boxes were pulped, as the sector acknowledged that teachers and assessors simulating assessments could be okay for some competences.

I was concerned to see this Government refusing to learn from the past and trying to develop T-levels without the expertise of teachers or assessors. Luckily, they have now been allowed in, but why is there only one awarding body per qualification? If choice and competition are good for GCSE and A-levels, why not for T-levels? It makes no sense to discontinue qualifications that are understood and respected by candidates, by parents—who are a particularly hard nut to crack—by employers and by further and higher education. They have been instrumental in ensuring that less academic, or in some cases more academic, students had choices in pursuing practical studies with enough academic content to satisfy universities’ entrance requirements, and which were capable of being studied alongside A-levels.

The Minister says that they will be withdrawn only if they overlap with T-levels but, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, they are very different animals. An engineering BTEC and an engineering T-level may suit quite different students. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, previously mentioned that, in the trial of his university technical colleges to which he has alluded today, only the brighter students took to T-levels, but there are many other students with different skill sets for whom the BTEC has been an ideal mix of knowledge and skills that has fitted them up for successful employment. Why on earth would the Government stop that?

In five years, we may know for sure whether T-levels are really the bee’s knees but, while they are still in their infancy, it would be folly in the extreme to put all the eggs in the T-level basket and possibly ruin young people’s chances of meaningful study or employment. I appeal to the Government to do nothing hasty and to keep BTECs funded as far into the future as possible. If not, they risk doing irreparable harm to young people’s prospects of meaningful employment and to addressing the country’s skills shortages.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on tabling this amendment because it has helped to shift the Government’s thinking on T-levels. When they were originally announced in July 2021, it looked as though there was going to be a war between BTECs and T-levels. I never accepted that, because T-levels will survive as an important choice at 18 for students who want to take them. I am quite convinced of that. To show my confidence in them, of the university technical colleges for which I am responsible, two have been teaching T-levels in construction and skills for the past 18 months and another seven joined them in September last year.

Since the Bill was first debated, the attitude of the Government has moved. I read only a few minutes ago the letter from the Secretary of State, large parts of which the Minister, who has been very helpful in this matter, repeated. BTECs will still be needed in the future because over 200,000 are taken by students each year. I was very glad that the Minister said that the views of employers would be taken more into account, because three large manufacturers, JCB, Rolls-Royce and Toyota, have approached the Government and said that BTECs should run alongside T-levels until students decide whether they want to take them or not.

The real success of T-levels will be if students actually want to take the exam and see it as a way to get into university. Many of them will do that but, on the other hand, lots of students will not want to take them. We found in the two experiments that we were engaged in that students who get grades 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 in GCSEs are reluctant to handle T-levels as they are really above their capability. But they also want a technical way of getting to level 3; that is very important. AGQs, which the Minister mentioned, and BTECs do that. She did not actually mention the national diploma and the extended national diploma, but I hope they will be carefully considered by the Minister. That is how many people, particularly black and ethnic-minority students, get into a university.

I hope that this is a genuine change in the attitude of the Government towards BTECs. They are an important part of the educational process of our system. As I have said before, hundreds of thousands are taken each year. The letter from the Secretary of State is reassuring, but we will know only when we see the results of T-levels. We will have the first results of T-levels from a few hundred schools this August, more in August next year and more in August the following year before any BTECs are defunded. Then the House will have the opportunity to see whether the pledges given today by the Ministers are being fully implemented.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister and the Government for listening to our concerns. It was good to get the letter from the Secretary of State, although only this morning, which was cutting things a little fine. However, we appreciated the meeting with the Minister yesterday, which gave us a whole day to absorb what was planned. In this place, we have to listen and think rather rapidly.

Anyway, we felt very strongly, as the Minister knows, that defunding BTECs when T-levels were untried and untested could spell disaster for students wishing to learn practical, work-based skills. We constantly pointed out that BTECs are well understood and respected by employers, by academia and, perhaps as important, by parents. It is a benefit that they can be combined with A-levels, which T-levels cannot, giving additional opportunities to students in their choices.

We will continue to try to ensure that schools celebrate their BTEC and apprenticeship leavers with the same enthusiasm as their university entrants. Until the Government amend their highly academic criteria for schools, that may be a pipe dream, but there is hope that young people are increasingly looking at the high cost of university, the absence of social life during Covid—no getting drunk in the pubs, although that is mercifully coming back again—and considering that learning and earning is a better alternative than learning and being in debt.