Colleges and Skills: Covid-19

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Robert Halfon

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on having secured this important debate during this Colleges Week. I am sure we are all delighted to be back in Westminster Hall, and I cannot think of a better and more important topic than the role of FE colleges in our vital skills-led recovery from covid-19. I genuinely thank all hon. Members who are here today for their support for FE colleges and technical education. I know that they all love our colleges, so I thank them all for their contributions.

FE colleges and providers have never been as important as they are now. For some of us, they have been important for a long time—I attended mine 35 years ago—but they are going to become so vital for so many people up and down the country, many of whom will face changed circumstances. Their prospects will change in such a short period of time, which is highly unusual. The colleges have responded brilliantly during the crisis, and are continuing to do so as we look towards recovery, and I place on record my huge thanks to the sector. Every week I have heard how colleges are supporting not just their learners and vulnerable students, but the wider community. They were making scrubs and masks for the NHS, giving food parcels and meals to the most vulnerable, and doing all kinds of fundraising events. The stories that I hear from FE colleges are truly amazing.

Before covid-19 struck, longer-term reforms to the school system were already under way. For generation after generation, technical education has been undervalued and neglected. That neglect must and will come to an end. I am glad we started our technical education reforms when we did, because they are going to be important to the recovery, boosting productivity and offering young people a real choice of high-quality training and pathways to successful careers that are equal in esteem to traditional academic routes.

It will not have escaped anyone that the world has gone digital and that we are living through a technological revolution. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter), for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and for North West Durham (Mr Holden) pointed out how important that is. It is a key pillar to levelling up and providing opportunity for all in the towns that will need support to recover from coronavirus and that have felt neglected for many years.

It is fantastic and timely to see that colleges and other providers have begun the roll-out of T-levels for 16 to 19-year-olds. A number of Members mentioned their support for them, and I was delighted to hear it. They represent the biggest reform of post-16 education since A-levels were first introduced 70 years ago. They are attracting investment of £500 million each year, once they are fully rolled out. The introduction of these new, pioneering qualifications was challenging during the pandemic, so I thank all 44 providers who battled through to deliver them during very challenging times—they were too important to delay. We have waited a long time to put this bedrock for our technical education in place, working with employers and employer-led standards to ensure that we invest in the right areas and the right things.

We are also investing up to £290 million of capital funding to establish 20 institutes of technology across every region in England. I reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) that these will be a pinnacle of technical education and training. They are unique collaborations between colleges, universities and businesses, and they will offer high-quality technical education and training in key economic sectors, such as digital, construction, advanced manufacturing and engineering. The first 12 institutes are being rolled out, and the competition for the next wave was launched on 8 October. The opportunity for innovative, high-tech proposals to come forward is now there. The Department for Education very much welcomes any new proposals for the second wave of the institutes of technology.

We need to increase the take-up of higher level qualifications—levels 4, 5 and 6—as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham. These higher technical qualifications are key and give people of all ages the opportunity to develop a prestigious high-quality, high-technical route, if that is right for them. The Prime Minister has been clear on supporting that choice. Getting a loan for a high-value technical course should be as easy as getting one for a degree, whether it is taught in an FE college or a university. A new funding system will open up new alternatives, ensure that further education colleges and providers have the same access to funding that universities do, and “remove the bias”, as the Prime Minister put it, that propels young people into universities and away from technical education.

Technical education is part of the lifetime skills guarantee announced at the end of last month. We are already engaging with colleges on some of the measures to be delivered from April next year, particularly the first level 3 funding for adults. That will give adults who missed out on that opportunity the chance to pursue it, by fully funding their first full level 3. It will focus on valuable courses that will help them in the labour market. We will be supporting providers to develop more level 3 provision. We will encourage them to do so, and we will monitor the demand from adults closely.

One important aspect of our recovery is supporting the most disadvantaged. Further education colleges do a lot to provide opportunities and social mobility for the most disadvantaged in our society. We have already been investing in that. Some 20% of learners in FE have some learning difficulty and disability.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the Minister for her important speech. One of the biggest problems in encouraging people to do FE and skills is the lack of proper careers advice promoting apprenticeships and skills in schools. Despite the Baker clause, which was meant to change that, not a lot has changed. What are her plans to ensure that schools encourage skills, apprenticeships and further education and give FE an equality of prestige with university?

[Gillian Keegan]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I actually had a meeting about this long-standing problem just before I came here, because careers is a key pillar of our FE and skills White Paper to ensure that everyone understands the routes. The Careers & Enterprise Company has done a lot of work to ensure that young people get a broad range of opportunities to talk to businesses, look at career opportunities and visit colleges and universities, but not everyone gets all of the information they need to make an informed decision.

Hon. Members will all be aware of the skills recovery package and the Chancellor’s plan for jobs. There is a lot of investment in apprenticeships, traineeships and classroom-based study. We are also extending the National Careers Service and putting in an extra £32 million to provide additional careers support.

FE providers have always been key to delivering adult education as well. Therefore, as we develop our plans for reskilling adults, that will include an extra £2.5 billion over the course of the Parliament for the national skills fund. Contrary to what was said by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), the national retraining scheme has not been scrapped; it will be built on and become part of the much bigger national skills fund. The national retraining scheme had £100 million; it will be £2.5 billion for the national skills fund.