Vocational Education and Training
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I join in the thanks to the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, for initiating this debate on a topic very dear to my heart. The Government have decided to rename vocational qualifications “technical” in the deluded notion that that will in any way alter the academic superiority which has, for generations, bedevilled our economy and our young learners. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, set out, schools are measured on their EBaccs, GCSEs, A-levels and university entrants, so inevitably, where their reputations and their financing are at issue, they will of course be constrained to channel their students into those paths, however inappropriate, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, set out—and I may say that I agreed with everything the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said.
As ever, I declare an interest as a vice-president of City & Guilds. At one stage, when I was working for the institute, I was involved with qualifications for schools, at that point CPVEs—certificates of pre-vocational education. I went into schools that offered them and, time and again, came across young people who would have been lost in my classes when I was teaching French but who were blossoming when faced with learning about car engines, catering or caring. They found a confidence in learning because they were involved in an activity which played to their interests and their talents. The icing on the cake was being awarded a national certificate for their endeavours—something that had often totally eluded them in an academic curriculum. It was splendid to see them discover that learning was fun and relevant. As their confidence grew, so too did their capacity to look at maths, English and science as other possible areas of achievement. In other words, vocational achievement could be the key to unlocking academic achievement. However, like so many vocational endeavours over the years, including GNVQs, diplomas and others, CPVEs fell prey to the academic thought police who opined that they were not proper qualifications—where was the grammar and the trigonometry?—so they were withdrawn.
As I said in the Queen’s Speech debate, and as the noble Viscount said today, do the Government never make the connection between the growth in gangs and violent crime among young people and the fact that their compulsory education has left them alienated from learning, with a lack of self-confidence and self- respect, because Shakespeare and algebra are not their skill set? Had there been encouragement and opportunity to work on cars, plumbing, construction, catering or the creative industries, as my noble friend Lord Storey set out, how different their lives after school might have been—and their chances of exclusion would have been much reduced, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, set out.
The Queen’s Speech referred to the education system preparing young people for the world of work. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, that depends on good-quality careers information and guidance at the earliest stage, certainly at primary school. It appears that very young children begin to gender-identify jobs as boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs. The country faces a critical skills shortage. It is essential that girls are encouraged into construction and engineering, and how good it was to hear of the 11 year-old girls doing engineering in the schools mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. So they should. Why should the boys have all the fun? Equally, boys should be encouraged into primary teaching and nursing if that is where their talents and inclinations lie. We cannot afford to sideline any of our young people from following work-based paths where their skills would be in great demand.
I asked in that debate—and now have a Minister to answer—“What are the Government doing to motivate those young people?” They may gain no credits for their schools in the narrow definition of education against which schools are judged. They may wish to embark on apprenticeships, often in the teeth of opposition of school and parents, who fail to understand just how important a skilled workforce may be—and, even then, they are faced with the inexplicable need to pass GCSE English and maths, which may well be entirely inappropriate to their chosen career. Above all, they need essential skills and a work ethic, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, set out.
I know of the interest that the Minister takes in further education, with its remit for work-based skills. It would be good to know that the narrow academic paths that are the flavour of choice of this Government will be broadened with work-based ones.
I should also like to ask the Minister about the dreaded T-levels. Why are the Government not building on BTEC and City & Guilds qualifications, which have long been the benchmarks for industry? Can he reassure us that such tried-and-tested qualifications will not be undermined and will continue to be funded and supported? This Government will not be forgiven if, in their pursuit of their latest initiative, they withdraw funding and support from technical and craft vocational qualifications, which have long served employers and learners so well. Will the Government think again on T-levels and give more time for them to be piloted, meanwhile ensuring that existing qualifications remain available and supported for work-based learners? We have heard from all sides of the House today how vital it is that we raise the game on our vocational and skilled workforce. Doing away with tried-and-tested qualifications will not help with that.
We face skills shortages in construction, engineering, hospitality and the creative industries. We have heard that other countries—Switzerland and others have been noted—already surpass us in preparing young people for the world of work. We deserve an education system that meets the needs of learners and the economy, and that calls for a much better supported offering of vocational education and training at secondary school. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2019
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing this order, which, as we have heard, provides for a number of adult education functions to be transferred from the Secretary of State to the Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority, the name of which, as we heard from my noble friend, has been shortened to the North Tyne Authority, which is much less of a mouthful. It will operate from the 2020-21 academic year onwards. These functions relate to education and training for persons aged 19 or over; to learning aims for such persons and provision of facilities; and to the payment of their tuition fees. The exceptions are in relation to apprenticeship training or a person subject to adult detention. Will the noble Lord clarify why apprenticeships are not included, and who will have responsibility for the education of those in adult detention?
We can all agree with and support the function to encourage education and training for persons aged 19 or over, and the Liberal Democrats supported the creation of this new authority, although we regretted that the four councils south of the Tyne refused to take part. There are powerful combined authorities elsewhere across the north of England that have mayors. They give focus to strategic planning and to the delivery of growth, jobs, higher education and skills standards. The Minister has named those combined authorities.
We support the order and welcome the devolution of functions to local areas, away from central departments. This will allow the combined authority to support the skills that are needed in the local area and ensure that they are appropriate for the local economy. Because, in addition to general skills, many parts of the country have local skills, often craft skills which should be encouraged, particularly where they draw local young people into continuing skills which might otherwise be lost. I do not know exactly what these would be in this area, but I think of such things as papermaking, basket weaving, glass-blowing and watchmaking, all of which have small numbers who keep long-standing crafts alive. At a recent Craft All-Party Parliamentary Group, we had demonstrations of these, along with neon light making. Local crafts for local jobs are an important part of the economy, as well as being important for our heritage.
How much funding will be allocated, and how does this compare with government funding for further education colleges more generally? How will more training and education be encouraged? How will the combined authority be held accountable for the functions that are being devolved? As my noble friend set out so clearly, this is an area with huge transport problems. Given those transport shortages and the long journeys students often have to make, what provision will the Government make to help with transport costs? I welcome the consultation that took place locally on the content of the order, I look forward to the Minister’s reply, and I wish the order well.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank the Minister for introducing this order. As he said, it is of course similar to orders relating to six other combined authorities which we considered in your Lordships’ House almost exactly a year ago. I do not intend to repeat what I said then—at least, not at the same length. I will repeat, however, that the devolution of powers and funding for adult education that this order introduces are welcome. I very much hope that it enhances the provision of adult education in the north-east.
I thank my noble friend Lord Beecham for his local knowledge and for setting out the region’s funding cuts—sustained over the past decade—and what the new combined authority will face as a result. Much effective adult education provision is delivered locally, in line with the needs of communities. As the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum states, the transfer of those functions will assist in providing local areas with a role in,
“managing and shaping their own economic prosperity”.
Spending on education and adult learning needs to be seen as an investment for the long term. To achieve a sustainable supply of skills with the flexibility needed to meet the ever-evolving needs of business, industry and the public sector, the UK must maximise the potential of its existing workforce. That means that all adults of working age, whatever their background or location, need every opportunity to upskill and/or reskill. Learning and earning will make the biggest and quickest difference for the learners themselves, to their families, and to the communities they live in, as well as to employers and the wider economy itself.
A year ago, I referred to the possible unintended consequences of this transition from centralised to devolved funding. I highlighted the case of the Workers’ Educational Association, a long-established and hugely respected organisation of 116 years’ standing and the UK’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education. I said then and I repeat now that I need to declare an interest of sorts, as the WEA was my first employer after leaving university. More than 25% of the WEA’s 48,000 students are in the combined authority areas, and many of them are from deprived communities that are furthest from the labour market. The devolution of funding could have the unintended consequence of diminishing this provision rather than enhancing it.
In last year’s debate, the Minister recognised the work being done by the WEA and stated that it,
“has a major role to play in delivering adult education and fostering a culture of lifelong adult learning … It is vital that providers such as the WEA make contact with the MCAs”—
the combined authorities—
“and support them so that the local economy and workforce have the skills and expertise that they need for the future. We have provided some guidance to the MCAs for the transitional years”.—[Official Report, 24/10/18; col. GC 85.]
I regret to say that, one year on, some of the WEA’s fears have been confirmed. The organisation has adapted to the new landscape by securing grants and contracts in most devolved areas, though this has not been without the loss of provision in several areas either because it was unsuccessful in its bids, or the new contracts did not support the same range of provision as the organisation previously delivered. As a national provider delivering locally, it remains in a difficult position, seeking multiple grants and contracts against different criteria, often on a year-by-year basis. It should surely be of benefit to combined authorities to acknowledge the level and impact of existing national provision in their area, not only as regards the WEA, and to seek a degree of continuity and gradual transition. It would help if the Government too acknowledged the role of national providers, thus safeguarding against the unintended consequence of destabilising provision, which is already having an impact on local authorities.
I want to raise a matter relating to the Explanatory Memorandum. Paragraph 12.1, under the heading “Impact”, states that:
“There is no significant impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies”.
It would be helpful—indeed instructive—if the Minister were to explain how such a statement could be included when, in paragraph 10.1, the memorandum states that no consultation was carried out. On what basis was it therefore determined that there was,
“no significant impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies”?
I ask this because the WEA is one of Britain’s biggest charities and a voluntary body. It was not asked what the likely impact would be, although of course it made its representations and concerns known to the DfE in advance of the orders introduced last year. It is clear that the impact of this and the previous orders is certainly “significant” as regards its ability to continue its established delivery of adult education.
The meaning of “significant” is of course subjective. Can the Minister say whether his officials assessed the effect on providers such as the WEA and deemed that effect to be not significant? If so, we should be told what criteria were used and at what level the impact would have been deemed significant. I do not expect him to provide these answers today, but I ask him to write to me setting out explanations. For devolution to be fully effective, support must be offered to the full range of providers—local and national—especially those already working with the most disadvantaged.
As the Open University has reported, the real casualties from the 2012 funding changes in higher education have been part-time students in England, whose numbers have since dropped by around 60%. Those who have been most deterred from study by the trebling of tuition fees are not those aged 18 entering full-time higher education but older, especially disadvantaged students. It is apparent that the biggest reason for the decline is the fees and funding policy in England because the scale of the decline in England, where tuition fees are much higher, is two and a half times greater than in other parts of the UK.
The key question regarding the future delivery of adult education concerns how much funding will transfer and how that will affect the ability of the combined authorities to deliver a full provision. The transitional funding in preparation for the full implementation of this order is not clear. The Minister said there was £6 million available in funding for the six combined authorities that were the subject of orders last year for 2019-20 and 2020-21, funded nationally by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The combined authority for the north-east opted to begin its transition from academic year 2020-21, so will it also receive transitional funding for two years, including for 2021-22? How much will be made available annually?
The spending review announced £400 million for further education, which was widely welcomed within a sector that had been starved of adequate funding over the previous decade. Yesterday we had the unexpected announcement by the Secretary of State of £120 million for eight new institutes of technology. That was without consultation with the FE sector, which is already performing much of what he seems to envisage, so why reinvent the wheel? Simply fund FE colleges adequately and they will do the job that is necessary. But I am afraid that we now seem to have a rather macho Secretary of State who thinks that the role of Cabinet Minister is not demanding enough, so he has abolished the post of Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills and subsumed that remit within his own. I have never been a Cabinet Minister but I am fairly confident that it is a full-time job. I am equally confident that any previous Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills would contend that that too is a full-time job. To downgrade that post and bury it within the Secretary of State’s own portfolio demeans the importance of the skills agenda and the need to expand it, rather than the opposite. Labour will certainly reinstate the Minister of State post, while ensuring that apprenticeships and skills have the funding and the direction needed to play their part in building the economy that the country needs.
I may have departed somewhat from the order, but my final remarks are directly related to the devolution of adult education functions. The last thing required is mixed messages about how we ensure that we provide for the sustainable supply of flexible skills to which I referred earlier. This order is one part of the jigsaw, which is why we welcome it, but much more needs to be done.
Education Funding
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. As he said, we are all delighted that more money is going into education, but like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and my noble friend Lord Addington, I have reservations. Mine focus on the part of the Statement relating to colleges. As we know, our FE colleges are underfunded and unloved and have been for far too long, yet they often not only provide outstanding education but are a community resource and provide community cohesion. I want to ask the Minister about two matters. First, the Statement says:
“Colleges and further education providers will receive an extra £25 million to deliver T-levels”.
T-levels are totally untried and untested, whereas there are a raft of well-established and well-understood vocational qualifications—I declare an interest as a vice-president of City & Guilds—which could continue to do great things if they had better funding behind them. Why is this funding going only to T-levels, which are not yet tried and tested and about which we know very little, and not to all the work-based qualifications which provide the skills that the country desperately needs?
My second question repeats that of my noble friend Lord Addington, which I do not think the Minister replied to. It relates to the pernicious practice of trying to get youngsters repeatedly to resit GCSE English and maths, only for them to fail again and again. All one does is reinforce failure and leave people demoralised and thoroughly fed up about education. Nobody argues with the idea that young people need literacy and maths skills, but GCSE is not the right vehicle for that. Colleges spend an awful lot of time and resource trying to put youngsters through those wretched exams and watching them fail again and again. When will the Government rethink and bring in some functional literacy and maths tests which would be far more appropriate for the youngsters who have to resit?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Baroness raises important points. It may be worth summarising some of the specific funding coming into the FE sector, because I know that she is a passionate supporter of it, as am I. I am very pleased that, under my new Secretary of State, I will have greater involvement in the FE sector and look forward to discussing some of these issues personally with the noble Baroness.
We will invest an extra £400 million in colleges and school sixth forms; there is a 7% uplift of 16 to 19 funding, not including the increase in funding for pensions. The total includes protection of and an increase in the 16 to 19 base of £190 million, with £120 million for colleges and school sixth forms so that they can deliver on subjects which require perhaps more expensive teachers, such as engineering and so on. I hear the noble Baroness’s concerns about T-levels, but we are also adding another £10 million for the advanced maths premium. There will be an additional £20 million to help the sector continue to recruit and retain teachers, and there will be £35 million more for targeted interventions to support the area that the noble Baroness is concerned about; that is, resits. Some of that money will be used to look at different ways of trying to help children who perhaps do not learn in a traditional way. In 2019, more than 46,000 pupils successfully resat their English GCSEs, as did 35,500 maths pupils, to obtain a standard pass. All those children whose careers were blocked by not having maths and English have cleared that hurdle this year. I am one of seven children in my family; only two of us got maths O-level, so I know exactly the frustration faced by children who struggle with these subjects, but we are on the right course and I hope to use some of this additional money to see whether we can find better ways to reach them.
Multi-academy Trusts
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
I am not sure if the noble Baroness is worried about them being in post for too long or too short a period of time. Given that the programme has existed at scale for only about six years, perhaps she is worried about the short length of tenure. The department is fully geared up: all Companies House filings of retirements or new appointments to boards go through to the ESFA and where we see what we would call unusual actions—for example, a number of trustees retiring simultaneously—we will escalate that as a matter for review.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, is it the case that every academy in a multi-academy trust is audited? If not, why not? If so, what would the repercussions on the trust be if one of the academies failed the audit?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, an academy trust is a single legal entity, so the individual schools are part of that. But the noble Baroness is quite correct that there is a full external audit carried out on academy trusts every year. That is unlike local authority schools, where the average frequency of audit is about every four years, so I can assure her that the scrutiny is far higher than for local authority schools.
Apprenticeships
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
On the right reverend Prelate’s first point about universities, I encourage him to write to me and I will pass that to the Universities Minister. We have put a tremendous impetus behind the universities sector to engage particularly with areas of lower attainment. It now spends £800 million a year trying to reach areas where university access has previously been low. We now have 440 standards approved and another 50 in the pipeline.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
What steps are being taken to incentivise schools to encourage young people into apprenticeships? The league tables currently encourage GCSE and A-level results. Could schools not be given formal recognition for their young people who go into apprenticeships?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I refer the noble Baroness partly to my earlier answer where I spoke about the surveys that we are carrying out with schools. For example, the Compass data encourage seven meaningful encounters with employers. The apprenticeship programme is very much part of that.
School Exclusion: Timpson Review
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, to answer the noble Earl’s question on teacher training, we are increasing awareness of the training available on such things as having mental health leads in schools. We have also committed to a programme of training 200 psychiatrists and psychotherapists to go into the school system. We are very aware that we need to increase the skillsets available to schools to deal with the wide range of issues confronting them. I understand the noble Earl’s concerns about Ofsted as an institution. We are trying to create a cultural change here, but I am optimistic that the new framework will move some way to addressing his concerns. We have done a lot. For example, when my right honourable friend became the Secretary of State for Education, he did a joint video with the Chief Inspector of Schools to try to get the message through on issues such as workload and looking at data. It is a piece of work that we will have to continue.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I welcome this report but might the matter of exclusions be a feature of the Government’s relentless concentration on the academic success of schools, which marginalises students with more technical and practical skills and, indeed, those who simply want to be good, rounded citizens? Can the Minister say what happened to the excellent work done by Charlie Taylor, the coalition Government’s expert on behaviour, some seven years ago? He had some great systems for enabling some of the worst offenders to change their ways. He talked about positive measures to improve attendance rather than the very negative message of stopping exclusions.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, without sounding complacent, I think it is important to give some perspective to the current exclusion rate. It is about the same as it was 10 years ago; it improved but it has got worse in the last three years. I do not want to paint a picture of there being a crisis. I accept that we are concerned, and we are doing something about it, but it would be wrong to suggest that there is a crisis. Regarding attendance, we have made quite a lot of improvement. The persistent absence rates have dropped quite a lot. Looking again at a 10-year ranking, in 2006-07, 24.9% of secondary schools had persistent absence of more than 10%; that is now down to just under 14% of secondary schools, and that is while raising the bar to make it a harder judgment. So attendance is improving. I do not have the specific information on Charlie Taylor’s work; I am happy to write to the noble Baroness. The Tom Bennett review will be in a similar vein, showing schools best practice and how to manage children in these situations.
Multi-Academy Trusts: Salaries
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord understands the degree of scrutiny to which academy trusts are subjected. It is a far higher level of scrutiny than local authority schools receive. They have to submit audited accounts every year; a comparable school in the local authority sector is audited only every three or four years on average, and that information is not published or easily available. So I disagree fundamentally with the noble Lord’s point. Regarding comparable salaries in the two sectors, a head teacher of a secondary academy is on an average of about £92,000 per year compared with £88,000 for a maintained secondary head, but the heads of academy schools have more responsibilities. The noble Lord says that we do not have any leverage but, according to the results of a recent survey, the Kreston report, in the highest of six bands—schools with 5,000 to 10,000 pupils—salaries have fallen from £140,000 to £114,000.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord has just referred to the £140,000 salary, which the Minister described as reasonable. In the world of finance that he comes from, that might be a reasonable salary. In the world of education, which I come from, it is nothing short of obscene. At a time when teachers are experiencing real pay cuts and often having to subsidise teaching materials because there is nothing in the school budget to pay for them, how on earth can the Government justify this unacceptable face of education?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the justification is very simple: you take the number of pupils in that trust, divide the senior management team costs by that number and look at the extraordinary results being achieved. These schools were failing; they had been abandoned by local authorities for decades. These children are now getting extraordinary life chances.
Education: English Baccalaureate
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, there has indeed been a decline in the proportion of pupils studying design and technology, but great changes have been made to the subject. As I mentioned in response to a Question last week, we have created a different and additional subject called food preparation and nutrition, which has attracted 46,000 entries. It was part of the old design and technology course. We have worked with the James Dyson Foundation, the Design and Technology Association and the Royal Academy of Engineering on the content of the design and technology curriculum. However, in the spirit of collaboration with the noble Lord, I shall quote an eminent left-wing academic on the sociology of education, Professor Michael Young of UCL, who says that social justice demands that children from low-income backgrounds have as much access to knowledge as their advantaged peers.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I will follow on from the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Black. Schools are currently rated and funded largely on academic criteria; that is, EBacc, GCSE, A-level and university entrance. However, the country is facing an acute shortage of people with creative and technical skills. What are the Government doing to incentivise schools to encourage not just their EBacc pupils but those who are technically and creatively skilled, to ensure that they fulfil their potential?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have put great emphasis on the technical aspects of education through apprenticeships and T-levels. We have also carried out substantial reforms to technical education and the qualifications that go with it. In the past two years we have introduced technical award entries, which are designed to be more practical in their teaching, while in 2017-18 some 194,000 pupils entered for these vocational subjects. They include practical studies such as business, which had 29,000 applicants, while information communication technology had 51,000.
Special Educational Needs and Funding
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have certainly kept this matter under continual review. I mentioned some sums of money a moment ago and, as I said, the amount of overall funding for the high-needs block has increased by £1 billion in the last five years. However, we also accept that early interventions can have a very advantageous impact on young people with disabilities. For example, having a clear focus on literacy is helping children with dyslexia, and we are improving initial teacher training and continuing professional development to raise awareness.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, how do the Government intend to address the training needs of staff in education and the capacity for improvement, as identified in the report, given that over half of teachers say that they have received no training on dyslexia?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we are introducing more training on SEND issues in the initial teacher training modules. For example, we are including the subject of mental health generally as a voluntary rollout from September next year and it will become compulsory the following year. We have also provided funding to the British Dyslexia Association to deliver training to teachers to support the early identification of learning difficulties.
Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for introducing the regulations. It is always somewhat frustrating that discussion of regulations offers no chance to amend, but of course it gives us an opportunity to challenge and seek clarification from the Government on rationale, detail or implementation.
We on these Benches found the Technical and Further Education Act a deeply depressing piece of legislation. Our further education sector makes an enormous contribution to education and the economy but continues to be overtasked, underfunded and underappreciated. The Bill was largely about potential insolvency in further education—hardly a resounding message of support. Of course, it introduced the baffling T-levels, which were not sought by the sector and continue to be baffling months after their inception. They risk undermining the highly regarded vocational qualifications that have served this country well for generations, but we will keep the perplexities of T-levels for another debate.
I declare an interest as a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation I worked with for some 20 years. For more than 140 years, it has been an immense source of employment skills for the nation. City & Guilds has always worked with FE colleges, which play a crucial part in delivering world-class qualifications that are highly regarded in the UK and overseas by employers across the whole range of work-related skills.
We note that a number of FE colleges have fallen into financial difficulties. Can the Minister tell us how many of them have actually become insolvent? I note that the Explanatory Memorandum indicates that,
“in reality we expect that FE colleges entering insolvency would be a very rare event”.
One wonders why, in that case, so much of the Act was devoted to such insolvency. We gather too that:
“The Department will publish two sets of guidance before the instrument comes into force”.
Will the Minister say when we can expect these sets of guidance? Apparently there is to be no monitoring to assess whether there are,
“any unexpected burdens or tensions within the FE sector”.
Any legislation that imposes additional burdens and tensions on an overburdened sector should surely be dismissed instantly. Would it not be prudent to have some sort of review?
Will the Minister also say what part in those financial difficulties has been played by the unwelcome and damaging burden of providing GCSE resits in maths and English? If ever a policy was designed to reinforce failure in learners, these resits are that policy. Young people who may have brilliant workplace skills are forced into taking exams again and again which have little, if any, relevance to the work they wish to do, and they fail time and again. This is hardly encouragement for the future. Colleges have been tasked with this depressing and resource-intensive duty. When will the Government realise the negative and counterproductive impact of their obsession with academic qualifications, regardless of the talents of young people or the relevance of those qualifications to the things that young people actually want to do? Can the Minister say if and when the Government have plans to review the GCSE resit policy?
I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, over the drop in funding for FE, which is surely unacceptable with all the pressures put on it.
Can the Minister say what provision has been made for private providers? What progress has been made in developing comparable safeguards for apprentices and other learners who are with private providers, especially in view of the collapse of 3aaa? What about the looming collapse of learndirect? Do these regulations have any implications for protecting learners if there are subcontracting arrangements, for instance? We know that colleges and private providers are entangled in highly complex subcontractors. The Minister may have an answer on this, but if he does not, perhaps he could write to me.
We do not seek to challenge these regulations, but we express again our deep concerns over government policies towards vocational, or even technical, education. We hope that wise heads will appreciate that it is in the national interest, and in the interest of learners, to give every possible support and status to those who seek to acquire the work skills the country so desperately needs. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Jones (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his cogent introduction and my noble friend for his eloquent steer in a debate such as this. My remarks will be very brief. The regulations refer to Section 124A of the Insolvency Act, which is headed “Petition for winding up on grounds of public interest”. Will the Minister expand on how he perceives the public interest in the context of this sphere of education? The matter is complicated, and obviously the provision is necessary, but can he give a recent instance of where a specific further education establishment has been perceived to be insolvent? Has that happened? Does he know of a sixth-form college that has been wound up? Has that happened?
Paragraph 7 of the Explanatory Memorandum on the policy background is helpful. Does the Minister know whether exceptional financial support has been given to one of these institutions? Like others in this debate, I think the further education sector is crucial to the future of Britain’s economy. In particular, FE colleges might help us save what remains of our manufacturing base.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
There is no objection to the fact that young people are helped by being able to read, write and add up. The point is that GCSEs are very academically focused and the content of those syllabuses is completely inappropriate for many people who have technical skills and could happily do a functional test paper but not the academic papers of GCSE; it is the GCSE exam that is the bugbear, not the fact that people need to be able to read, write and add up.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
I will certainly take the noble Baroness’s views back to the department and reiterate them; I understand exactly what she is staying. She also raised a question about providing guidance to governors. We are committed to providing clear guidance, particularly on their duties and liabilities under insolvency law. The general College Governance guide, last published in 2014, will be updated. Both sets of guidance have been drafted and are being developed with the stakeholders—the Insolvency Service, the Association of Colleges and the Sixth Form Colleges Association—ready for publication in, we hope, the next few weeks.
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, asked whether I have any specific examples of colleges that have become insolvent. The short answer is no, as they have so far resolved their issues. In 2016 we created the restructuring facility, a fund from which some £330 million has been drawn across the sector. That has been used specifically to help them carry out the restructurings and some of the mergers to which other noble Lords referred, so there has been a period of consolidation over the last two years.
The noble Lord also asked about sixth-form colleges. There is a provision—this also addresses the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden—for sixth-form colleges to convert to academy status. If they do that, they get the benefit of VAT recovery. The question was: why cannot everybody do that? The reason is that it is a complicated process. It is an option that we have offered to sixth-form colleges but not all of them have taken it up.