Technical and Further Education Bill (First sitting)

David Rutley Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Q I applaud your desire to reach out to learners and have a conversation with them during the teething process. However, there does not seem to be a specific requirement in the Bill to have learners on the board, talking to you. They are going to be the guinea pigs. This will be up and running very soon; April seems five minutes away. Can you specify how learners are going to be connected to the board?

Peter Lauener: I cannot specify that in detail at the moment, because that is, properly, something that the board should discuss. With my deputy chief executive, Mike Keoghan, I am making a plan of board activities during January, February and March, to allow the board to focus on all the aspects of its remit and to think about the governance as well. I mentioned earlier that we expect to consult on a draft strategic plan for the institute for 2017-18, and I am sure that that will be an occasion to raise the question and get lots of views back. The board can then discuss it in the January to March period before coming out with its final plan, I hope right at the beginning of April, so that it is clear from the start of the institute’s operation exactly how it will operate across a broad range of activities, certainly including the one that you have mentioned.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Q The Bill supports the occupational categories of quality apprenticeships set out in that excellent document, the “Post-16 Skills Plan”; they include construction, and engineering and manufacturing. That is fantastic and a real step forward. Do you both believe that the Bill provides an effective ability to redefine those categories as economic sectors evolve? Secondly, do you believe that the mechanisms are in place to enable businesses and employers to have a meaningful role in redefining those categories as things progress?

Lord Sainsbury: It comes back to the original question. You have to have a certain amount of flexibility. As far as I can make out, that flexibility is there, and it is important. Of course, it is also important that we do not let the system degenerate, whereby everyone goes back to saying, “I want something specifically for my business or a very small group of businesses.” It is very important that one keeps down the number of routes, but exactly what categories they include will have to be for the people running those routes to say. I think we have made quite a good stab at doing that, but there are one or two cases where you can certainly argue about whether we got the right job in the right route.

Peter Lauener: It is absolutely vital that the institute actively manages the system of apprenticeship standards. For the past couple of years, while new standards have been developed by trailblazer groups, we have not had that picture of what the overall system would look like. Lord Sainsbury’s report helps enormously with that. An early priority for the institute is to develop that map, communicate it, review it actively and spot areas that need updating. I imagine that one or two of the early standards will, with hindsight, look a little bit narrow, so they ought to be reviewed. Every standard has a review date anyway, but the institute, through its route committees, will need to actively manage that.

One of the great virtues of the German system is its absolute clarity about the number of apprenticeships, routes into apprenticeships and things like that. If you talk to people in Germany, they often say, “We’d like the system to be more flexible.” I think the institute has the opportunity from the start to build in that flexibility and responsiveness to the changing labour market.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Q I have a quick question about the idea that this is going to turn into another 11-plus. What reassurance can you give us about what you have put in place to ensure that the technical route will be as prestigious as the academic route?

Lord Sainsbury: There has been a very long-running argument about this. It is useful to look at the experience of other countries. If you do that, you see that pretty well every developed country has a system of two routes: an academic route and a technical education route. There is quite a variation in the point at which people choose between the two routes, but most of them have it. In most of the successful countries you find the two routes are equally well valued, so there is not a problem of the technical education route being considered inferior. You can have these two routes and both of them be highly valued.

The question we have to ask ourselves is why in our system the technical route is undervalued. I think the answer is because it is a very bad system that does not deliver what people want on the system. What they want above all is to be able to take a qualification and for that qualification to work in the marketplace. What that means is that you can go along to an employer and say, “I have got this qualification,” and the employer will give priority to you over somebody who has not got the qualification. That is not true of our system. The first thing you have to do to make the technical education route valued is to make it deliver for young people something of value to them, which is the ability to get a better job with security. That is the issue. It is not about age of selection or the fact that you have two routes.

Peter Lauener: I agree 100%.