Apprenticeships and T-Levels

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I commend the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for securing this debate. There are no ifs or buts about it; we just have to get further education right. I want to confine my remarks to three areas. First, we need more teachers. Secondly, we need more space. Thirdly, we need reform of both T-levels and apprenticeships.

We are running out of teachers in further education. Courses are closing, waiting lists are growing and colleges cannot pay enough to attract people from industry—the Association of Colleges calculates that there is an average pay gap of £9,000. Would the Minister consider presenting a medium-term plan to improve pay and conditions to get teachers into our class spaces? Furthermore, will she extend teacher workforce planning to further education, as the previous Education Committee advised?

Colleges do not have the space to train young people, so we need sustained capital funding in skills infrastructure. I feel blessed to have been able to visit the Poole campus of Bournemouth & Poole college, where so much more could be done to teach clean energy skills if there was investment in the right space. The college knows what space it wants to build the facilities in; it just does not have the sustained capital funding to make that happen. Will the Government appraise the needs of colleges and support them to access the spaces they need to provide apprenticeships and training in the skills that will fuel the growth of our economy, given that growth is our Government’s No. 1 mission?

I look forward to the Government confirming what the qualifications landscape will look like for school leavers, following the very welcome commitment to pause and review Conservative plans to defund unpopular qualifications such as BTECs, which rival T-levels. T-level courses, particularly in education and childcare, may include a substantial work experience placement. That might be a good idea in principle—I have been very lucky to visit Bournemouth & Poole college and learn about its world-leading health T-level—but just over one in 10 construction and engineering T-level students could not complete the required work placement. Student numbers are lower than planned; drop-outs are high; announced courses have been cut or thrown into doubt before they started; courses have not been funded for young adults aged 19 to 24, when our country needs them to be educated and in training; and the Conservative Government, which this Labour Government replaced, botched the roll-out. Will the Government increase support to employers taking T-level students?

There are high hopes that the reformed growth and skills levy and the lifelong learning entitlement will give workers access to high-quality training in higher-demand sectors. I invite the Minister to visit Bournemouth & Poole college—particularly the Bournemouth campus—where we have 2,000 apprentices in training, and an outstanding achievement rate of 8.4% over the national average. Huge economic differences are being made to local employers such as Sunseeker, which, together with the college, has launched a training initiative to address a national skills shortage affecting the marine industry. Its Skills Academy provides fully paid 12-week intensive boatbuilding skills courses across five specialisms. Following training, students join colleagues at the shipyard to achieve a nationally recognised qualification over 12 months. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire asked whether we need Skills England. The example of Bournemouth & Poole college working with Sunseeker shows how an organisation can find and fill gaps at a national level, and co-ordinate the funding and frameworks to grow our economy.

Octopus Energy is ensuring that we create more than 4,000 skilled jobs, including qualified heat pump installers, by 2030 to help our Government to meet their clean energy by 2030 mission. With the launch of the first employer-provided low-carbon heating apprentice scheme, Octopus is demonstrating how employer providers can create high-quality apprentice programmes. We need to ensure that apprenticeship funding rules requirements and the accountability framework reflect the needs of employer providers, rather than focusing mostly on the needs of colleges and training providers. Will the Minister consider creating employer provider-specific funding rules in order to streamline the reporting responsibility? As part of the reform of Ofsted, which I welcome, will she support joint working between technical experts and Ofsted inspectors so that the inspectors better understand the technical requirements during inspections? That is particularly key for Octopus Energy’s pioneering approach of developing skills driven by rapidly developing technology.

For years, the same thoughts have been swirling through my mind and the minds of many of my constituents, whose doors I have been knocking on over the past two years. It all comes down to this single question: why can Bournemouth and Britain not do better? Why can we not have the things we are entitled to? Bad things are not inevitable; they are the result of political choices, such as those that have been made over the past 14 years. We want to make different choices in Bournemouth and in Britain. We want young people to get on and have decent, well-paying jobs that mean presents under the tree, a meal out with loved ones, a new home and a new car in the driveway, and a sense of purpose and mission in the careers they choose. I very much welcome the Minister coming to this debate, and I look forward to her response. I thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire for calling this important debate. I really call for a turning of the page, because for too long, too many people have been held back.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Before I call Jim Shannon, I will just say that there are five people wishing to speak and 20 minutes, so you can do your own calculations.