Education Bill

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

No, I will not.

My point—[Interruption.] My point, if the right hon. Gentleman will listen to it, is that children have a right to a broad and balanced curriculum, and his prescriptive English baccalaureate is taking us away from that. The body that has independently advised Ministers, which was set up by the previous Conservative Government, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, is being abolished, so what can we expect in the future? We can expect ministerial whim replacing independent expert advice. As the Education Committee pointed out last week, a mix of academic and vocational options is more likely to keep young people engaged and help reduce behaviour problems.

We welcome provisions in the Bill to ensure that every young person has access to independent careers advice, but we fear that this is yet another instance where rhetoric will fail to live up to the reality. Is not the truth that the Secretary of State’s mismanagement of transition arrangements to an all-age careers service and front-loaded cuts to local authority budgets have meant that careers advice is disappearing?

Why does the Bill remove the requirement on the Secretary of State to enforce the new legal participation age of 18? Is it because, with the scrapping of EMA and the other measures that I have described, he knows that full participation until 18 will never be achieved? Alongside the clauses on higher education, no wonder ASCL talks of a Bill with

“serious implications for social mobility”.

In the ways that I have described, the Bill takes power from pupils and, in the words of UNICEF,

“risks narrowing the educational agenda and limiting children’s rights within schools.”

Let me turn to how the Bill takes power from parents. The National Children’s Bureau has called this a Bill which

“chips away at hard-won parental rights”.

It removes their ability to challenge decisions about admissions and exclusions and to make local complaints. The Bill abolishes the local admissions forum. ASCL raises concerns that there

“may now be a void in policing admissions”.

Admissions forums involve local parent representation, governors and heads. They exist to give parents avenues of redress and to help them get a fair deal. As with many provisions in the Bill, their abolition seems at odds with ideas of localism. With no group co-ordinating fair admissions, the NASUWT says that there are real risks of increased inequality, back-door selection and covert discrimination.

We welcome the extension of the schools adjudicator’s powers in relation to academies and individual cases, but we fear that this move is undermined overall by a weakening of the adjudicator’s role and his ability to change admission arrangements. ASCL has said that it is

“essential that parents have a well defined route to deal with their grievances relating to admissions” ,

yet the Bill repeals parents’ power to complain to the local commissioner.

The Secretary of State mentioned Tony Blair and our reforms. They were all about empowering parents, just as in the health service we empowered patients with guarantees. The Bill strips away those powers from parents. That is why we do not support it.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that in addition to the powers being stripped from parents by the Bill, they are also losing the right to legal aid for education cases? Parents without means finding themselves in difficult and challenging situations when fighting for their children will therefore be left without any recourse for help.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. It brings me on to the subject of parents whose children have special educational needs or disabilities. Her point is particularly important in respect of such parents. Concerns have been raised about the measures in the Bill disempowering parents in relation to exclusions. The removal of the ability of appeals panels to tell schools to reinstate a pupil who has been expelled has been described by the National Children’s Bureau as

“counter to the principles of natural justice.”

These changes affect the rights of every parent and the life chances of every child, but they have big implications for the most vulnerable.

Parents of children with disabilities and special needs already face a battle to get them a good education. With its changes to admissions and exclusions, which will see schools become judge and jury, the Bill stacks the odds against those children even further. Poor behaviour can arise from a failure to identify or support a child’s special needs, yet in future any exclusions that might result will be much harder to challenge.

The changes must also be seen in the context of the diminishing ability of local authority to fund and co-ordinate specialist services that help children facing the biggest challenges. The Education Committee has noted that some pupils could be left

“without access to critical support”.

The autism charity, TreeHouse, fears that councils will no longer be able to plan services for children with complex needs.

That brings us to a central problem with the Government’s rush to reform: the Bill has been brought forward before the long-promised Green Paper on special educational needs. The National Autistic Society has stated:

“The impact of certain aspects of the Education Bill on children with SEN and disabilities… will not be known until the Green Paper has been made public.”

That means that the Government are asking Members to vote on these measures without giving them either answers to the questions posed by TreeHouse or the ability to feel sure that the most vulnerable children in their constituencies will not be adversely affected. That is profoundly wrong. It is an abusive process and an affront to this House, but, much worse, it sends a clear message to the parents who are most affected that their children are an afterthought for the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It may not surprise many right hon. and hon. Members to learn that I want to discuss part 7 of the Bill, which covers post-16 education and training. More specifically, I want to discuss clause 65 on “The apprenticeship offer”. This is particularly appropriate given that we are in national apprenticeship week, as the shadow Secretary of State said. I am pleased to see that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning and his shadow counterpart are in their places.

I have been a passionate campaigner on the importance of apprenticeships for both businesses and workers, and for the economy and for wider society. They provide a structured career path for young and old people alike, while helping to develop the skills that UK plc will need if it is going to compete effectively on the global scale. It is for that reason that I introduced my Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill, which seeks to increase the number of apprenticeship places available across the country by introducing a requirement that when awarding large contracts all public authorities must ensure that successful bidders demonstrate a firm commitment to providing skills training, wherever possible and appropriate, and, crucially, apprenticeship places.

I am delighted that my Bill is to have its Second Reading debate this Friday, during national apprenticeships week, and that it has garnered widespread support from organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses, the TUC, the North East chamber of commerce, Unison, Unite, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, the Association of Colleges, the Federation of Master Builders, the Electrical Contractors Association and the GMB, and indeed from the former Government enterprise champion, Lord Sugar, to name but a few. It is a simple measure that will help to increase the number of apprenticeships available. It will ensure that employers do their bit and are on an equal footing when bidding for public contracts as the Bill will reward those with good practice and encourage the others to do more. I therefore urge the Government to do all they can to secure the Bill’s passage through the House or to take on the ideas and proposals in their own policies.

I was also delighted to welcome my own 16-year-old apprentice to her first day in my Newcastle office. Charlene Curry, a business administration apprentice from Newbiggin Hall, in my constituency, has been placed in my office by the excellent North East Apprenticeship Company, which works hard on a not-for-profit basis to marry businesses with willing apprentices, with great success. I wish to take this opportunity to urge all right hon. and hon. Members to make every effort to accommodate an apprentice in their office, if they have the ability to do so.

At this stage, it is useful to take stock and acknowledge that the previous Labour Government had a clear, unwavering commitment to boosting and expanding apprenticeships. As I have said, this is national apprenticeship week, which the previous Government launched in 2008 to celebrate and promote the important role that apprenticeships play. Under Labour, the apprenticeship system was lifted from its knees by a Government who invested money, status and opportunities in apprenticeships for young and older people alike.

In 1996-97, the final year of the previous Tory Government, only 65,000 people started an apprenticeship. By 2009-10, that figure had risen to almost 280,000, a massive and highly commendable increase which comfortably exceeded Labour’s original target of 250,000 starts.

[Mr Hayes]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I was about to pay tribute to the Minister’s efforts in that regard, but he can intervene later if I do not cover the matter sufficiently.

Labour increased the number of apprenticeship starts from the planned 200,000 to 279,000 in the final year alone, an increase which contrasts with the current Government’s ambition of funding an extra 50,000, 75,000 or 100,000 apprenticeship places over the next four years—an announcement was made yesterday, and I hope that the figure keeps rising. Either way, the target is unambitious over four years when we consider demand and the obstacles that young people now face in trying to stay on at school or carry on to higher education.

Labour’s commitment to expanding apprenticeships included the introduction of a statutory apprenticeship offer as part of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which required the Skills Funding Agency to secure an apprenticeship place for all suitably qualified 16 to 18-year-olds by 2013. Part 7 of the Bill seeks to repeal that duty and replace it with a requirement to fund apprenticeship training for those people who have already secured an apprenticeship place. I do not doubt that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning shares my passion for promoting the importance of apprenticeships, but I am concerned about the signal that that repeal will send out. Should we not be encouraging all young people to think that an apprenticeship is at least an option for them?

Yesterday, City and Guilds published the results of a study showing that employers actually find apprentices to be more valuable than graduates. What impact does the Minister believe that taking away the guarantee of an apprenticeship will have on the number of young people seeking and successfully acquiring apprenticeship places, particularly among those from disadvantaged backgrounds?

[Mr Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, because I know that time is short. I have three points. First, we warmly welcome her attempts to link procurement and apprenticeships. Regardless of whether we can support the Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill, we will take action to support the intentions behind it. Secondly, on the numbers, we will grow apprenticeships on the back of the progress that Labour made, which I acknowledge, to an unprecedented level—we have put the funding in place for at least 105,000 more apprenticeships. Thirdly, we have changed the offer because we want to ensure that everyone who secures an apprenticeship place with an employer is funded. That is my commitment to the House tonight, which is reinforced in the legislation.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the Minister for his response to those queries.

At a time when we are facing the highest recorded level of youth unemployment, with one fifth of young people out of work nationally, rising to one third in the north-east, should we not be putting every measure in place to ensure that our young people have the opportunities to gain skills and qualifications? It is creditable that the Minister has managed to secure funding for an additional 30,000 apprenticeship places for 16 to 18-year-olds, but does he genuinely believe that those extra places will even come close to meeting demand?

Recently published figures show that BT received 24,000 applications for only 400 places on its apprenticeship programme this year. PricewaterhouseCoopers has reported that applications to its school leavers entry scheme doubled to 800 in the past two years, while Network Rail has said that it received 4,000 entries for around 200 apprenticeship places this year. I would be grateful if the Minister took the opportunity provided by this debate and national apprenticeship week to clarify how removing the statutory guarantee will help the Government to increase the number of young people starting apprenticeships and the further measures that his Government intend to take to guarantee the expansion of both youth and adult apprenticeships across the UK.