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.

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[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.