Education: Vocational Subjects

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I welcome Professor Wolf’s review and the Government’s Statement, in particular what they have said about reviewing the league table system, making it more sensitive and, I hope, looking more closely at the distance travelled by all children in the education system. I would like ask two questions. The first relates to achieving literacy in children, which enables them to be successful in these courses, and the other relates to the quality of mentors in the workplace.

First, does the Minister recognise the important contribution of charities working with children in schools, and indeed within their families, to address their difficulties in attaining literacy? For instance, Voluntary Reading Help works in more than 1,000 primary schools and trains adult volunteers in the community to work on a one-to-one basis, with a commitment over a year to work with individual children twice a week. Also, Learning School Help works with children, in their families and in their schools, to help them achieve literacy. As to the workplace, can the Minister give more detail about how mentors are developed, how good-quality mentoring is recognised and celebrated, and whether there are any schemes to certify good-quality mentoring in the workplace for apprentices?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Earl about the importance of charities. One announcement made today in the broader context of tackling the NEET problem—no one has found a better way of saying it than NEET, because otherwise it takes too long—is a new £10 million-a-year fund to be set up, which I hope will be taken up by charities and the voluntary sector, to come up with solutions to help those children, such as I was lucky enough to see recently, to re-engage, undertaken by Fairbridge, which does a fantastic job in helping to re-engage those children. I very much agree with the noble Earl about the role of charities.

If I have more detail on the noble Earl’s second point about mentoring, I will come back to him. I will follow that up; but he and I may also have a chance to discuss that further outside the House.