Technical and Vocational Education

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, and normally I would be 100% behind him and seek to knock it out of the park, but on this occasion the Education Secretary has organised an international conference of educators here in the UK, which is not a bad place for the UK to be. However, my instincts are with my hon. Friend.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I urge my hon. Friend to continue making party political points, because they are rather good. Will he add that too many Government Members have no history of further education or technical colleagues, as I do? I did my A-levels at Kingston technical college.

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right.

Talking of political divisions, the Government’s focus, as we have seen, has been not on the vocational demands of our education system but on tinkering with the curriculum and a free schools policy. At the Skills Minister’s favourite school, the Swedish private equity free school IES Breckland, which he has supported so much, Ofsted discovered “inadequate” teaching, poor behaviour and declining student literacy levels. The Swedish for-profit model that the Government were so keen to import has been exposed and discredited in the Skills Minister’s own backyard—responsible for one of the biggest falls in educational standards anywhere in the world.

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[Tristram Hunt]

The hon. Lady should worry no more, because in 10 months’ time we will have a Labour Government delivering a sustainable education and skills policy.

Our motion talks of

“a new settlement for those young people who do not wish to pursue the traditional route into university”.

Let me lay out the Labour party’s ambition for Government to deliver equal status for vocational qualifications from school to university and beyond, to provide clear routes for highly skilled technical or professional careers and to have a dynamic, modern education system that will ensure that Britain can compete as an innovative, productive economy. We shall start with technical baccalaureates for 16 to 19-year-olds, in order to provide a clear, high-status vocational route through education. That is a Labour policy. The tech bacc will include quality level 3 vocational qualifications and a work placement to provide a line of sight through education into employment.

Our next policy is to ensure, unlike this Government, that all young people continue to study English or maths to the age of 18. These are the most essential of all 21st-century skills, and getting them right is fundamental to future career prospects. That does not mean asking young people to redo their GCSEs over and over again. Rather, it means ensuring that applied, functional and useful English and maths will help them to succeed with their careers. We will have slimline English and maths courses designed to complement a student’s core programme of study.

Furthermore, we think that English and maths should be part of an ambitious national baccalaureate framework for all learners. Alongside core academic or vocational learning in English and maths, we want young people to undertake a collaborative project and a personal development programme, which would nurture the character, the resilience and the employability skills of all our young people. Much of the tech bacc route will be delivered through further education colleges.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend will recall that the Skills Commission inquiry into pathways at 14, chaired by Mike Tomlinson and Ian Ferguson, strongly recommended GCSE papers in practical English and practical maths. Does he think that that would be a good way forward?

[Tristram Hunt]

We want an education system in which those young people who wish to pursue technical and vocational pathways have a grounding in English and maths that will allow them to succeed in their own fields, and in which there is a much greater interrelationship between the academic and vocational pathways. That kind of qualification would provide exactly that.

This Government have hammered further education provision. They can find £45 million for a Harris free school in Westminster, but they have done that by slashing funding for further education learners and sixth-form colleges. That is a scandalous set of priorities. We will work with FE providers to improve teaching and to ensure that colleges focus on local labour markets. Our highest performing FE colleges will become institutes of technical education with a core mission to deliver Labour’s tech bacc and the on-the-job components of apprenticeships.

I have laid out the Government’s mendacious record of spin and subterfuge on apprenticeships. We will deal with the devaluing of apprenticeships by introducing a universal gold standard level 3 qualification lasting two years. We will ensure that every firm that wants a major Government contract offers apprenticeships. We will also ensure that employers are involved in the development of apprenticeships by giving them support over standards and funding.

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[Matthew Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman mentions unemployment in Croydon. In his constituency, it has fallen by 29% over the past year, and the number of apprenticeships has increased by 170% since the election, so he should be saying thank you very much. As for the difficulties of managing a tight budget, whose fault is that? It is the fault of the Labour party, which left us with the biggest deficit in modern peacetime history.

[Mr Sheerman]

I apologise for having made a political point earlier. People outside the House are worried about the fact that we get into an argy-bargy between the two parties. [Interruption.] Come on. Surely there must be commonality of purpose in doing something for the young people in this country who do not go down the higher education route. Will the Minister please now give his attention to the further education sector? As hon. Members from either side of the House who care about this know, we must galvanise the FE sector to deliver what we want.

[Matthew Hancock]

Absolutely, and I am happy to work with the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), who spoke so powerfully earlier. It is a great pity that the Front-Bench spokesman’s speech was one of unremitting negativity and, crucially, that it was based on an utter misunderstanding of what is happening in vocational education. The reforms we are pushing through are about driving up standards, having higher expectations and ensuring that more young people have the chance to achieve their potential. Instead of saying that 50% should go to university and not caring—indeed, forgetting—about the rest of them, we are making sure that all young people get the chance to succeed.

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[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

People like you and I, Mr Speaker, who are interested in history will remember that about 50 years ago Harold Wilson made his great “white heat of technology” speech. I recommend that Members read it, because it leaps off the page. He was talking, as Leader of the Opposition, about how Britain must transform itself in order to be a place where all of us could share in a good life. I came into politics to secure the good life for the people of this country and, in particular, my constituents. Re-reading that speech—I had not looked at it for many years—I found it remarkable how he was looking at the changed social and economic structure. He said that there would not be any room for unskilled and semi-skilled people in our country, that a production line in Detroit could make a car with no human intervention at all—automation was coming.

Harold Wilson said what a pity it was that only a tiny number of people, who were usually from posh backgrounds and going to elite institutions, were going into higher education. He said that 10% of people, instead of 5%, should be going to university, and that we should have universities in every major town and city. Of course, before long we had the expansion of the polytechnics. Interestingly, his message started a bipartisan view of upskilling our country; there was little demur about it. There is a bit of old-fashioned stuff in the speech: the Soviets had just put a man into space and shocked everyone, and his allusion to Soviet science does not ring true today. However, he was right to say, “This is our country and its social and economic structure is changing fast.”

During my time in this House, the social and economic structure of the country has moved very fast—we can all see that. Now, fewer than 10% of people make anything, while 30% are in public services—health, education and local authorities—and 60% are in the private sector, with 1% in agriculture. That means that most people are working in the private sector. If they are looking after people—at the bottom end or the top end, young people or old people—they will be on the minimum wage or minimum wage plus. That also applies to people in retail and distribution. There are some very good jobs in the private sector. Cross-hatching that, most of the jobs are in small and medium-sized companies, not the big companies.

When I left school, I went to work in the chemical industry and worked for ICI—a big company. I had an intensive year at Kingston technical college to get my three A-levels because I was a naughty boy and dropped out of school at 16. After getting a scholarship to the London School of Economics, I had the wonderful experience of being able to get into a growth area. As a young person seeking employment, people took the time to give me advice about what I should direct myself to. They not only estimated my capabilities but said what one could earn in different professions. Too often, we do not tell young people what their future is.

We need more bold recommendations on a bipartisan level. Why cannot we go back to sharing policies? None of us have got it right on vocational and technical education. The former Labour Government put in a lot of effort, leadership and resources. We did not get everything right, but we had some success. The current Government have not had all successes, although it is absolutely true that they have made some improvements. However, there are some radical proposals that no party has listened to, although Labour is moving towards them. We should not have unemployment under the age of 25. We should be like the Dutch. Why should any young person up to the age of 25 not be in education or training, or in a job with training, getting valuable work experience? I agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that we should not allow young people to live on a little bit of housing benefit in the shadow land—that is no way to grow up. We all need to grasp that there should be no unemployment or idleness under the age of 25.

Anyone without maths and science as part of their background is never going to make it. I applaud the maths hub launched by the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). We absolutely need that.

In the last few moments of my speech, I want to make another radical proposal: I want a citizenship service. People who go to university are too young and some young people remain idle for too long, so we need a citizenship service for everyone, including those at university.

The only way any of us will get what we want is by reinvigorating the further education sector. There are more than 350 FE institutions and we all have one not too far from our constituencies. We can have university technical colleges and all sorts of new-fangled things, but FE colleges will deliver the numbers we need. They have to be given that push and the resources. A lot of young people who have failed in other education pathways go to FE colleges and they need the best help available. The quality of FE maths teaching is deplorable, so let’s do something about FE.

Finally, let us not forget the parents. No one has mentioned the parents yet. A child’s parents can back them, put them up and wipe away their tears if they are being bullied at school. We learned last night that a supportive mum and dad can compensate for horrible bullying. There is something wrong when a reasonable percentage of people in this country do not get that family support.