Education Bill

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, very briefly, this is my maiden contribution to this consideration in Committee of the Bill. I am a former Minister, and perhaps I should formally declare that I am a fellow of City and Guilds, although I have no operational responsibilities there.

I also warm to this idea. There was a time—if noble Lords wish to look it up; as I recall, it was Section 24 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992—when it was in the hands of the Minister of the day, who happened to be me, to exercise a kind of nuclear option whereby everything that was not authorised could be extinguished. That is an extreme version and one that every year we fought off enacting. I am very glad that we did. The world is a much more protean place now. I happen recently to have had correspondence with the Minister’s colleagues in the department about some very sensible input by the French inspector general of education, which I had not expected to be made in quite the tones that it was. It certainly was not insular.

We should allow Ofqual, as a new institution, the maximum slack to pursue its interests and duties. There are concerns about the quality of the examination system, although I suspect—given the sheer industrial volume of what is processed through the system, including the number of entries and scripts—it is perhaps not surprising that mistakes are made from time to time. However, at least let us not ask Ofqual to confine its activities to a narrow schedule in presenting the achievements of schools and the options that it can take. My message to the Minister would be to keep as much flexibility as we reasonably can.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, this is also my maiden intervention in this Bill. I support the final comments that were made, for two reasons. First, I declare an interest: I work with and support EAL, a bespoke awarding body. Its view is that the extremes that are currently available are really quite worrying. Secondly, and importantly for it, if we do not have those opportunities to bring to a halt and remedy the situation, it does no good for those awarding bodies that try very hard to make sure that they work very well. For those reasons, I support those comments. Perhaps the Minister will think about whether there is something in between, but certainly something detrimental should happen if things are not working out well.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, on the core point of this amendment, we certainly want to create a system that encourages all schools to offer high quality qualifications and gives pupils and parents the clearest possible information. To achieve this, first, we are committed to giving everyone access to the underlying data on all the qualifications taken in schools, in both the independent and state sectors. We plan to publish all the information the department holds on schools in a single place in a way that is accessible to everyone. We have made some steps already in opening up information on qualifications and we intend to do more. This puts parents in a stronger position to judge whether a school is meeting their child’s needs.

However, qualifications reported in performance tables should first be accredited by Ofqual in order to secure standards. Ofqual’s scrutiny provides a safeguard that qualifications are rigorous and challenging. It is open to all the qualification-awarding organisations to present the qualifications that they offer for accreditation. The majority of qualifications taken in the independent sector and all qualifications taken in the state sector are accredited.

In recent years, school performance tables have shown schools’ performances based on a system of equivalencies, which have ascribed a points value to a wide range of qualifications, and presented information about schools’ performance based on those points. However, sometimes that approach serves to conceal more information than it reveals, and it treats very different qualifications as if they are the same. Both may be excellent, valuable qualifications in their own right but they are not necessarily the same.

We want to try to give parents detailed and specific information about qualifications and not lump it all together. It is also the case that the current system of equivalencies has created some perverse incentives for schools to offer courses that score highly in performance tables but are not necessarily in the best interests of the children concerned. That is why we have accepted Professor Wolf’s recommendation that we should replace the existing performance table measures based on equivalence points and try to introduce more sophisticated criteria for deciding which qualifications should count in performance tables in future.

My noble friend Lord Lucas is extremely experienced in slicing and dicing data and I would welcome the chance for him to come in and talk to officials about whether there are ways that we can benefit from his experience and put it to the most effective use.

My noble friend Lord Lingfield raised the possibility of Ofqual taking a more nuanced approach, with a range of sanctions rather than the current, as he described it, rap over the knuckle or the nuclear option, and that perhaps it would be sensible to have something more graduated, maybe with some kind of fine. It is clear from the comments that have been made that the Government ought to think about that and reflect on it, to see whether it could be made to work in a sensible way, and to give Ofqual this kind of power as it develops. I am very happy to take those suggestions away and see whether that is something we can do and come back to at a later date.

With that and with the earlier points on the performance, I hope my noble friend feels able to withdraw her amendment.

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[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I am certainly in sympathy with everything that has been said on this subject. It takes me back quite a long way to the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts, in which education was one of the areas covered. We spent quite a lot of time encouraging teachers in girls’ schools to take a more proactive role in opening up ideas of different careers for the girls than was the tradition. I am sad to say that there is still quite a gap there. On the comment made about teachers not being adequate to do that job, it would not be a bad idea as part of their training if, periodically, they had to take a job for a while in the real world to see what are the practices here and now.

In engineering, all these years later, there is a dearth of girls prepared to take on that career. It depends to some extent on the people they see out there in the real world. If not many have made it to the top of their career, are running things and are looked up to by the rest of the engineering world, they are not as likely to go down that route. I hope that we will address that aspect.

I hope that my noble friend Lord Low will soon speak to his amendment. On the responsibility for special educational needs, I entirely agree with him that there is an enormous need to start that process early—incidentally, that is true for practically all girls. It is interesting to note that the Equality and Human Rights Commission makes the point by stating that a quarter of children in primary school want to go on to higher education. Among girls, more than 80 per cent have that aspiration. If they have it already, at least it should be kept going by giving them examples of the many areas where their skills would be needed. There is clearly a role for governors here. They have a role to play in this already, so this is not providing a new one because it is all part of what needs to be made available to pupils. I am certain that parents in the local area would take that view.

One other area I want to stress is that of the role of the universities themselves. Many of them already send their students, voluntarily of course, particularly into schools where the aspiration among pupils to go on to higher education is not high. I am sure that the Government will be pleased to know that that sort of advice does not cost very much, but it is very good practice for the students themselves and helpful to the aspirations of the pupils.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

I support most of the amendments in the group and I want to focus in particular on careers advice, on which many other noble Lords have already led. I agree totally with everyone who has spoken that unless careers advice is independent, it is very worrying. I hope that the Minister will consider whether Ofsted should include as part of its assessment of the effectiveness of a school how well it provides careers advice. It would not be an unusual process for Ofsted to get involved in. Although I agree with my noble friend Lord Peston that at the age of five you do not know what you are going to do, in this day and age people start taking an interest at a much younger age.

An area of concern has been raised by a number of employers who I have been talking to, along with a number of colleges. Recently I visited Newcastle College and North Lindsey College in Scunthorpe for Training 2000. What those colleges said was music to my ears. Although some careers advice is okay, a lot is obviously inadequate. But the principal at Newcastle College said that when she was a young girl—it was probably a while ago—no one had ever talked to her at school what it would mean if she went down a certain career path: how much would she earn and what would be her prospects going forward? Perhaps we have stayed away from those questions as well. For me, she made a telling point because, whether we like it or not, they are keen to know if they will have money to spend.

Through Semta I have been working with a careers adviser at BAE Systems, which has a programme in place in which representatives talk to young people about what it means to be an engineer and explain that it is not the dirty job that everyone thinks it is. There is a slide presentation to describe the earning potential at each stage of someone’s career progression. Some people might flinch at that, but in the real world of 2011-12, it is absolutely where young people are. It is the kind of information that is not always readily available. You can follow a pathway through looking at sector skills councils, but what is not often linked to it is the thought that, “If I work really hard and progress from this level to that level, what will that mean for me going forward in the sense of my future career?”.

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Debate on whether Clause 28 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, I will speak to the debate on whether this clause should stand part of the Bill on behalf of my noble friend Lord Knight, who regrettably has been detained outside London. He sends his apologies. I shall be brief. First, I shall explain the background of diplomas from the point of view of my personal experience with the engineering diploma. No one would dispute that it has been exceedingly successful. The drive for diplomas came from employers who, certainly in the engineering industry, were keen to have the option that the diploma provided. When we talked about careers advice earlier, we touched on the fact that teachers tend to steer pupils down the academic rather than the vocational route. The diploma provided an answer to that because it offered the option to go either way and cross over at various different stages.

My question is this: why do the Government feel the need to repeal the entitlement to these diplomas? It would be disingenuous not to say that, so far as the engineering diploma was concerned, we ran into some issues around what it might mean for other areas of the curriculum, in particular for A-levels. However, employer demand overall—I think it is the right word to use—was very encouraging, and certainly the sector skills councils, which were heavily involved in the diplomas, approached them with great enthusiasm. Why are they being withdrawn when they were proving to be hugely beneficial and provided one of the answers to the many questions raised in the debate on the provisions of Clause 27?

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I rise briefly to support my noble friend. We have heard a lot from the Minister and his noble friend about burdens and requirements on schools, but as I am sure he knows, the entitlement was not designed so that every school had to provide the whole range of diplomas. Within an area, however, a young individual was able to access all of them. I am looking at this from the other end of the kaleidoscope, if you like; it was not a burden on schools but an entitlement for a young person. They could study for a diploma somewhere accessible in their local area. Therefore I agree with my noble friend that it seems perverse and unnecessary of the Government to repeal this entitlement. If there is a genuine urge to achieve parity of esteem between vocational courses and academic subjects, it is hard to understand why this clause has been included in the Bill in the light of everyone’s desire to achieve parity.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Clause 28 is the first of two clauses related to the diploma entitlement. This clause removes the duty on local authorities in England to secure the diploma entitlement for 16 to 18 year-olds. The provisions being amended are not yet in force.

High-quality vocational education, just as much as academic education, is crucial to improving England’s educational performance. In that, I am in total agreement with the noble Baronesses, Lady Wall and Lady Hughes. That is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State asked Professor Alison Wolf to carry out her review of vocational qualifications. Professor Wolf published her report on 3 March. In it, she found some areas of great strength. Places on the best apprenticeships, such as those provided by Network Rail or Rolls-Royce, are highly regarded by employers and more oversubscribed than the most desirable course at the best university. There are excellent qualifications available, providing clear routes for progression into full-time employment or further study in higher education. However, these examples of excellence do not add up to an excellent system and are too often provided in spite of rather than because of the structures that Government have created. The diploma entitlement is one such example where a focus on structure and process has been taken too far.

As I have said, the provisions being amended here are not yet in force. Were they to be implemented as originally intended, they would place a duty on every local authority to secure access for 16 to 18 year-olds to all 14 diploma subjects at all levels, regardless of local needs or any other educational priorities. I reassure noble Lords that this clause does not remove diplomas or any of their constituent qualifications. Nor does it prevent providers of education to 16 to 18 year-olds from offering diplomas if they so wish. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, that the diploma in engineering has been the outstanding success of this particular qualification. We cannot say the same about the rest of the range of diplomas that were on offer.

The Government believe that schools and colleges should not be obliged to offer every diploma. They should be free to decide which qualifications to teach, according to the needs and aspirations of their students. Indeed, the Association of Colleges has said that it has always been uncertain about the diploma entitlement and that it has,

“always wanted greater freedom for colleges to offer courses and qualifications which best meet the needs of young people”.

The Association of School and College Leaders has welcomed the removal of the diploma entitlement, saying that,

“it was not practical to offer all lines to all students”.

Edge, which has done so much to promote vocational education, has said that,

“it was always going to be difficult to deliver the entitlement, especially in rural areas”.

Following Professor Wolf’s review of vocational education, we are embarking on a substantial programme of reforms. We have already confirmed that some valued vocational qualifications will be funded for teaching in September 2011. We have announced that industry professionals and FE lecturers will be allowed to teach in schools. We have clarified that schools and colleges are free to offer any vocational qualification offered by a regulated awarding organisation. By removing the diploma entitlement, we are ensuring that schools and colleges are free to consider which qualifications—academic or vocational—meet the real needs of their students, enabling them to progress into further study or a job. I repeat: this clause does not remove any diplomas or other vocational option for young people. It removes a bureaucratic and burdensome requirement on local authorities, schools and colleges.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

I thank the Minister for her response, and some of the things which she has shared with us are really quite encouraging. Nevertheless, I think a concern remains that the opportunity will be removed if it is not widespread. Regarding the comments of Professor Wolf, she made those at the very early stages. After looking at the evidence she has in fact since said that diplomas do provide opportunities for young people to take either the academic or vocational route without feeling discriminated against in any way, and that they give equality of credence to each.

Clause 28 agreed.