Young People (Employment and Training)

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was talking about that rather obscure way of describing it—a well formulated dual education system. It is right to say that, too often, our education system is predicated on the expectation that children will go to school, go through the primary and junior years, go into secondary education at 11, take their GCSEs at 16 and be successful, and go through to the sixth form and get the qualifications to go into higher education. That does not apply to the majority of young people in our country yet. The majority of our young people do not actually do that, yet if people listened to most of the chattering classes, they would expect that that was the case.

The rest of the young people in our country have a much less certain future, only because we—all parties and all Governments—have tinkered with and changed the alternative. We have not changed the route through to higher education that dramatically, although there has been some change in nuance and there are some changes going through now. However, the fact is that we have been frantically trying to find ways in which to engage young people in meaningful further education, whether that be in colleges, by which I mean FE colleges, or whether it be through young people going into apprenticeships, going directly into employment—employment with training or, sadly, without training—or, of course, going into the hands of private trainers. There has been a range of opportunities.

The private training sector is very underestimated. I know the private training world very well. Unlike most parts of the education system, there are brilliant private sector educators and trainers, and there are some average ones and some not quite so good, but the market in private training is such that if someone does not perform, they are more likely to go out of business or see their business shrink quite dramatically than if they are running a college. That is the truth of the matter.

There is a cold wind coming through the education system and particularly in relation to the area that we are talking about today—the employability of young people and their getting the right skills for employability. That suggests that increasingly we must have greater transparency in the outcomes of the alternatives and accountability for what is delivered, whether it is the private sector through the Work programme, Jobcentre Plus and anything that it contributes, or what colleges do.

We all have to be very conscious of the last annual report of the chief inspector of schools. I was surprised that there was such a critical evaluation of the quality of FE in our country, which I felt, as a former Chairman of the Select Committee, was a slumbering giant. I was recently on the Skills Commission, looking at specialism in further education. Where further education is good, it is really good. We need only look at Newham and Hackney. We need only look at the brilliant experience in Cornwall. A fantastic-quality education is being delivered off six sites. People there know absolutely what the labour market is like and are engaging absolutely with small and medium-sized enterprises, not just the easy big ones, and delivering relevant skills training.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the incredible work that he has always done in wanting to improve the life chances of our young people. Does he agree that there has been a tendency in recent years for the FE sector almost to compete for the low-hanging fruit, rather than seeking ways in which it can engage those who are not in education, employment or training by offering innovative and inspiring courses?

[Mr Sheerman]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. There is no doubt that the blemish on the record of our country, under several Governments, has been the inability to deliver high-quality education and training to about 25%—it is sometimes as high as 30%—of the population. They are a lost generation in many ways.

How do we have a system that allows so many children to underperform in primary school? We can predict by the time they are 10 that a significant percentage will never get the GCSEs to take them into a fulfilling career. By then, all the odds are stacked against them. What have we done wrong in primary school education? It is the new frontier. More people will look at the quality of primary education outcomes over the next few years, especially given the enormous pressure on places due to the boom in population growth. There will be a crisis in primary education. I am looking at the Minister, because he must know that.

We are not talking about primary education today, but when one goes into schools, and I still go into many schools over the year, every head says that they can predict NEETdom—the likelihood of a child becoming not in education, employment or training—very early, as the child emerges out of pre-school and into the early years of primary education. That is how challenging the problem is.

I am not sure, Sir Roger, how much time we have left for the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to set out what the Government are doing to tackle NEETs in the context of raising the participation age. I am particularly pleased to hear from the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). He has experience and a long-held passion. He was Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills in the previous Parliament and clearly has a huge amount to say. It is important and valuable for young Ministers such as me to listen to what he has to say. I strongly agree that there is cross-party consensus on tackling youth unemployment, which rose too much in the good years and, although it is still far too high, is thankfully now falling.

The only point of partisan contention was the rather disappointing part about information, advice and guidance. The new duty on schools to provide independent and impartial advice, the age range for which has since been extended, came into force only in September and is now in place. It did not replace a system. The Connexions system was widely regarded as a failure. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that the information, advice and guidance duty on schools is in place. Misrepresenting it, as the hon. Gentleman did—for party political reasons, he said—is unhelpful, because this is an area with broad party political support.

I shall take the opportunity to answer the series of questions the hon. Gentleman raised. I will try to get through as many of them as possible, but I am happy to answer them all in more detail if I cannot get through them in the seven or eight minutes I have left. The debate about the future of 16-to-18 education takes place in the context of raising the participation age, which was set out in legislation in 2008 under the previous Government and which we are taking forward. Since 2009, participation in education and work-based learning has risen from 78.8% to 82.2%. It is going in the right direction, but we must ensure that the tools are in place to make it go further. I shall touch on six areas where we are taking action to achieve that aim.

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned apprenticeships and their value and importance. Doug Richard’s recent review of apprenticeships puts employers in a central role, setting standards, overseeing testing and becoming more demanding purchasers of training. We can all sign up to and agree with that. He wants a shift from what he saw as a box-ticking assessment to having clear standards towards the end of an apprenticeship, accompanied by a more open and innovative training market, with greater freedoms in how people are trained and greater emphasis on the outcome. I am very attracted to that model, which builds on some of the principles being tested through the employer ownership pilot. We will respond formally to the Richard review in the spring, and we will consult employers, educators, providers and apprentices, but we welcome the review’s direction of travel.

We know that, as apprenticeships become more rigorous, many young people are highly motivated by the prospect of work, but need support to get into it. I strongly endorse the hon. Gentleman’s support for work experience. The statistic that four episodes of work experience lead to a 10 times greater chance of getting a job was new to me; I am interested in the analysis behind that and want to know more about it.

The idea behind having a high-quality apprenticeship programme is that, as employers often tell me, young people lack the right skills and attitudes to succeed in the application process. When they have to compete against adults for jobs, they risk being passed over because they do not have such skills. Traineeships will support a significant number of young people into apprenticeships. We are consulting very broadly on their design, but our aim is for them to be available for young people from September 2013. They will offer a combination of extended work placements, work skills and English and maths, together with other flexible training and support to suit individual needs.

[Caroline Dinenage]

I completely endorse everything that the Minister says about building links between business and students, which will give students much more experience of the real world. I wonder whether, like me, he was very impressed by the “We made it” school exhibition earlier today? It has encouraged young school kids—often from year 9 upwards—to get involved in innovation and invention to build the entrepreneurs, engineers and inventors of tomorrow. We should encourage more such projects.

[Matthew Hancock]

I am extremely excited by that project and many similar ones that are springing up. Part of the duty on schools to give information, advice and guidance to that age group is to encourage inspirational people to get into schools to show what they can do with their life, and to motivate pupils by bringing a plethora of opportunities and those from different industries face to face with them, so that they can understand what is available.