Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Nicholas Dakin

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

I think everybody recognises the very good work that Sir Michael Wilshaw has done, but he lays down a challenge to us all when it comes to connecting what we want to do in a way that empowers local communities. In a sense, that is one of the things missing from this Bill.

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

To follow that up with another quick intervention, does my hon. Friend agree that too few MPs get involved in school improvement in the local area? Many MPs of all parties talk about schools as though they were experts, but they do not roll up their sleeves and do what our hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) is doing—actually trying to make a difference on the ground.

[Nic Dakin]

I always listen carefully to what the former Chair of the Education Committee has to say, and he is right on this occasion. We all have a leadership role in our communities when it comes to supporting our schools and colleges and ensuring that they deliver.

This is the second occasion on which AET and E-ACT—the two largest multi-academy trusts in the country, responsible between them for 85 schools—have received significant criticism from the Independent Schools Inspectorate. That is telling. The Secretary of State is ultimately responsible for holding academies to account, but, two years after Ofsted’s warning that the trusts were failing to raise standards, we are again being told that their schools are not delivering for many pupils. I am sure we all agree that that is not good enough, and that it illustrates the size of the challenge.

Parents have a fundamental wish to be involved in their children’s education. A recent survey by PTA-UK found that 97% of parents wanted to be consulted when big changes were made to how their schools were run. When a school becomes a sponsored academy and the sponsor is chosen, that represents a big change and a big deal. Parents have an important role to play in challenging—and helping—school communities to improve, and their views should be taken into account at such important moments.

Vocational Qualifications Day

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Nicholas Dakin

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak briefly in support of this debate. We should all seize the opportunity to celebrate vocational qualifications, and it is good that we are doing so today. Vocational qualifications play a huge part in the mix of qualifications that young people and older people gain throughout their lifelong learning and development. I was a co-ordinator for the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative back in the 1980s, and I know well that vocational education is a holy grail that politicians, academics, practitioners, the general public, parents, businesses and industry have been working towards for many years.

This is not a quick fix, but we must ensure that we take full advantage of this day that celebrates vocational qualifications. Further education colleges, along with other institutions, are the fulcrum of ensuring that things happen in that space. My local FE college, North Lindsey College, does an excellent job of bringing together the worlds of work and study, because it has a pivotal role in the local community. The college has lots of links with local companies and businesses, and students of all ages come to work and study at its various premises. Further education is a key partner, and it needs to be backed and supported. I illustrate that with a local example: the work that North Lindsey College is doing with Bradbury Security on Youth Engineering Scunthorpe, a scheme that gives people who have been out of work for some time an opportunity to come back into it, doing work that would otherwise not exist. That work is not displacing jobs that would otherwise be taken by other people; these are new jobs. The scheme is onshoring jobs that Bradbury Security previously delivered from China. We need such work in order to reskill, develop capacity and secure and grow new business.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend knows more about this sector than almost anyone else in the House of Commons, and I defer to his great knowledge and professional experience. This is not party political, but does he agree that, across successive Governments, further education has been the neglected area of UK education? Does he agree that FE has been neglected in terms of budget, focus and interest for many years?

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is right that further education has been a Cinderella area of education and training. One reason why I applaud Vocational Qualifications Day is that it represents a real effort to rebalance what we are saying out there, and what is being said back to us. It is important that we seize that with both hands.

Careers advice is an area in which the Government need to up their game. We have a new careers and enterprise company in place, but it is not clear—the Minister might tell us that it is crystal clear—exactly what that company is doing, or how it will address the current deficit that means that whereas 63% of young people can name A-levels as a post-GCSE qualification, only 7% can name apprenticeships and only 26% are able to name national vocational qualifications as post-GCSE qualifications. Despite the plug that the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) gave for BTECs, only 19% of pupils were able to name them. When I was a college principal, I expanded the BTEC curriculum within my college because it acts as a very good bridge between the academic and the vocational. That applied learning is the sort of bridge we need in order for people to develop and move on to both vocational and academic pathways, as he described.