Technical and Further Education Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Money resolution: House of Commons & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I am going to talk about the local experience of further education in Kent. I welcome the independent report of the panel, chaired by Lord Sainsbury, that conducted an important review into the post-16 skills system. The panel was right to advise on improvements that could be made, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has just said. Improvements were needed after flaws were spotted following changes made in the last Parliament. The system is over-complex, with a confusing array of courses and qualifications that are insufficiently linked to the world of work and the needs of employers. Lord Sainsbury and the Government were right to accept the panel’s recommendations in July 2016 and publish a post-16 skills plan setting out their vision.

The proposals are about boosting technical education to make sure that it is of high quality and responds to employer needs, and the introduction of a new insolvency regime to protect students’ interests. Such things matter. In Kent, we have long had a problem with an institution that has variously been called K College and South Kent College. It suffered from debt problems and, frankly, ate principals. The problems were so deep-set that every now and again the principal would be sacked and the college would be renamed, but the whole thing would continue. The fundamental problems were the big debt overhang and the teaching of courses that employers did not want—courses that did not have the relevance to learners that is completely necessary. That is why the focus on good-quality technical education and information sharing between colleges and local authorities is so important. It is important for everyone—local authorities, employers and educationists—to work together and make a good job of it, because when they do so, learners benefit.

K College finally collapsed in a heap of debt, and it had to be sorted out during the last Parliament. It basically had to be broken up. Part of it was taken over by Hadlow College and part of it by East Kent College. We were able to reset and restabilise the whole situation, but doing so was difficult and took a long time. There was no real process for doing so, because there was no proper insolvency reconstruction mechanism. That is why this Bill is important. It will put in place a proper process, rather than haphazardly trying to make everything work and gluing it all together, and it will ensure that there is a focus on the kinds of skills that learners need.

In my constituency, the East Kent College campus in Dover was threatened with closure as part of the reconstruction. I fought against that for the very simple reason that many people have a low capital base, low household wealth and low aspiration, and they simply would not travel further out of Dover for skills education. That is a real concern, and we made the case for keeping the Dover campus because the skills it taught were more in keeping with the jobs available in the local economy.

The most important thing we can all do for our young people and our learners is to provide ladders in life—to raise the bar of aspiration and to tell people, “You can succeed and achieve, and you can do really well in life. If you go to college and learn some skills, you will do better, and you will achieve and succeed.” The most important thing to do, particularly for this Conservative Government who are so committed to the new meritocracy, is to allow people to climb ladders in life at any time.

Much has been said about whether we should have skills education from 14, 16 or 19, but we need skills education to be available at any point in life. We need the ladder to descend at any time. Many people with a difficult home life are not able to achieve and succeed in the usual exams—in school at 16, with A-levels at 18 or for a degree course at 21—and many people who have simply been slow to grow up have spent their teenage years less formatively than they might have done and with people who have not necessarily been a good influence on them. For those who have had such a life, but who suddenly wake up at 21 and 25, a ladder should descend for them to climb. Skills education is not just about the teenage years, but about lifelong learning because everyone should be able to climb the ladder of prosperity and success at any time.

For me, it was important to make sure that we kept the Dover campus of K College, which is now part of East Kent College, and to make the case for a new FE college in Deal—I also represent Deal—which suffers from so many of the same issues of low aspiration. In such ways, we can raise the bar and give people greater aspiration and life chances. That will enable them to find it easier to climb the ladders in their home communities —to get more skills and get better-paid jobs in the areas in which they live—without having to move away, as so many do. I am very passionate about such things, because we need more further and technical education in our towns, particularly coastal towns such as Dover and Deal, which too often suffer from less aspiration than they should.

I feel very strongly that we must focus on and do more about building an aspiration nation, with such ladders in life and life chances, and with proper processes for when things go wrong. That is why I think the Bill is fundamentally a good thing.