Queen’s Speech

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak on the skills Bill and agree with everything which my noble friend Lord Storey said. First, perhaps I may add my congratulations to those offered to the maiden speakers and say how sorry I am that we will not be hearing again from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth—Bishops have to retire so young; it is outrageous, really.

I remind the House of my interest as a vice-president of City & Guilds, for which I worked for 20 years on what we were then allowed to call vocational qualifications. City & Guilds and BTEC qualifications were and are recognised and highly valued by employers, students and parents, so it was perverse of the Government to ignore all that had been achieved over more than 100 years and assume that the invention of their T-levels would be able to replace the years of value from the recognition of employer-led skills that these two organisations command.

We have generations of academic superiority to overcome if we are to allow work-based skills to have the respect and importance they deserve. With A-levels and universities seen as the gold standard, we have allowed the very skills that the nation needs to survive to become underrated. We must make every attempt to rectify this if the country is to recover from the blows inflicted by Brexit and Covid.

In the giddy days of coalition, when I was a Minister in the education department—among a variety of other departments; such is the exciting life of a Government Whip in the Lords—I was struck by the fact that Ministers and officials had pretty well all come via the university route; they had no direct experience of further education colleges or of vocational education, training and qualifications. If the Government are intent on diversity, may I suggest conscious recruitment from among non-university officials? Although a university product myself, I had taught from time to time in colleges in the happy times when they offered free programmes in languages, which I was teaching, as well as in carpentry, floristry, basket weaving, computing and—truly important—ESOL, or English for speakers of other languages, which were life-changing, particularly for those women from cultures where women were not encouraged to do anything outside the home, particularly not to study. There are still some free courses online, but most college courses have gone because government funding has been cut by 60%. We saw ethnic minority women blossom when they were able to communicate with their neighbours, their children’s schools or their shops. It has been woefully short-sighted that these programmes have been cut back so severely.

There is encouragement in the development of apprenticeships, where young people are being recruited into government departments without the all-important degree; it is also encouraging that the Skills Minister, Gillian Keegan, is the product of a comprehensive school who started her career as an apprentice.

We Liberal Democrats believe that it is essential that more is done to ensure that people at all stages of life are supported to access education and training opportunities. We have proposed skills wallets, which would give adult learners access to £10,000 to spend on education and training throughout their lifetime. We recognise that mature students are likely to be more averse to taking on debt, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, reminded us; a lifelong loan may not be attractive. To ensure that people can access the opportunities outlined in the skills Bill, the Government should look at introducing proposals along the lines of skills wallets.

The lifetime skills guarantee at level 3 is welcome but too narrow. In the Bill, we would like to see a much wider array of qualifications and flexible credentials made available at all levels. There needs to be more support for achievement at levels 1 and 2; these are often the stepping-stones which enable those who have not found school study easy to gain confidence and interest in learning. We saw at City & Guilds, when NVQs were introduced at level 1, that many adults with no prior qualifications were incentivised, proud and honoured to receive a national certificate. For very many, that changed their approach to learning, and they continue to learn because of that elementary encouragement.

We would fully support better pay and conditions for further education teachers. Their pay has fallen woefully below that of schoolteachers, so if the Government are serious about skills, they must do something about those who teach and tutor them.

Finally, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, that it is essential that careers information, advice and guidance are offered from primary school onwards. Small children must see the full range of futures possible for their interests and enthusiasms before they are brainwashed into thinking there are boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs. Women make exceptionally good engineers, fire officers, pilots and plumbers, just as boys can make exceptionally good nurses, child carers, primary school teachers and hairdressers. We shall support to the hilt any steps the Government take to enhance skills but will seek to steer them into wiser waters where we feel their methods and decisions are ill informed or counterproductive. On these Benches, we look forward to a world where work-based skills are given the respect and encouragement from teachers, parents, employers and fellow students which they richly deserve and which the country urgently needs.