National Apprenticeship Scheme

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas]

I do not wish to be churlish in any way and at the outset I welcomed the fact that the debate was taking place. I also welcome the genuine and sincere contributions that have been made. However, my political views were forged in the 1980s and 1990s and my perceptions were based on the Conservatives’ attitude to manufacturing as I saw it in the north-east of England. I know that progress has been made in the apprenticeships scheme and I want to put that on the record, because we have heard a contrary view during the debate.

We have also heard from the Minister, who has been trying to soften the savage in-year cuts that the Chancellor has imposed on his budget by recycling £200 million from the skills budget into 50,000 apprenticeship places, costing £150 million—£3,000 per place. What kind of apprenticeship places will the Minister be able to get for a unit cost of £3,000? How has he costed those places, and what will be the breakdown by sector? He sometimes tries to give the impression that he is the first Minister ever to announce investment for extending apprenticeships, but the fact is that the previous Government rescued apprenticeships from the oblivion they faced under the Conservatives, who allowed the number of apprenticeships to fall to 65,000, with a completion rate of only one third.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a reception for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders in the House of Commons and of meeting young apprentices. Some were from General Motors at Ellesmere Port, some were from Toyota at Burnaston and some were from Ford at Dagenham. They were of varied ages and backgrounds, but they all shared a passionate belief in what they were doing and the part that they would play in the future of automotive manufacturing in the UK. It was an inspiring reception. I was disappointed not to see a Minister there, who could not only have met the apprentices, but listened to an interesting speech by Ron Dennis, from McLaren, on the future of UK manufacturing. Earlier this year, I attended the Airbus annual awards scheme, where the largest apprenticeships scheme in the UK was celebrated.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I, too, attended yesterday’s reception and met some of the apprentices from Honda UK, whose head office is based in my constituency. For me, the telling point was that 85% of those who take part in that scheme end up in employment with Honda, and the majority of the remaining 15% find jobs elsewhere, potentially being paid more money. That contrasts with the number of graduates who are unable to find work, as all the newspapers have been reporting. That shows the value of giving people real applied skills with real job opportunities at the end.

[Ian Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. To bring a little local experience to that observation, I should say that a successful scheme is operating at the Airbus factory in Broughton, close to my constituency. It is very attractive to young people in their teens who are still at school, whether they are capable of going to university or not. I know young people who are perfectly capable of going to university, but who have chosen to go through an apprenticeship programme because they regard it as the best way of developing their future careers. The scheme has been taken forward by combining study at further education colleges with development of that study through a foundation degree at a local university, and there is the added bonus of earning, which for many young people is preferable to incurring debt.

One point on which we can all agree is that apprenticeships need to be valued and their status recognised. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made the interesting suggestion that there should be a royal society for apprenticeships, which is a good idea. The level of expertise and skill required by many apprentices to carry out their jobs is entirely equivalent to that acquired through a degree. Larger companies, such as the car manufacturers I met yesterday—I have visited Honda in Swindon, which was an interesting experience—are doing a great deal to support apprenticeships.

The real challenge lies with smaller businesses, and that is the most difficult area on which we should concentrate. We need to carry forward the good work that has been so successful with many of the large investment companies that I have mentioned, develop it and learn the lessons so that we can extend the apprenticeships scheme to smaller businesses.

Bullying (Schools)

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that important intervention. He is absolutely right. One of the things that I have discovered from visiting schools is the importance of support from the head teacher for teachers, so that when parents come into the school to complain about a teacher, the head supports that teacher—certainly unless there are serious allegations. If teachers do not know that they have the backing of the head teacher, it makes their job twice as hard as it need be.

We have committed in the coalition agreement to

“give heads and teachers the powers they need to ensure discipline in the classroom and promote good behaviour.”

We will introduce legislation in the autumn that will give teachers the right to remove disruptive children from the classroom without fear of legal action and give them greater powers to search pupils for particular banned items. The list of banned items will be extended beyond the list that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole and I discussed during the Committee stage of the last couple of education Bills that went through the House. There will also be no-notice inspections for schools where behaviour is a serious problem.

All schools must look at behaviour and not be complacent. It is not always a given that poor behaviour happens in the most challenging areas. Over the past five years, I have visited nearly 300 schools around the country. I have been to schools in very affluent areas where behaviour is a real problem because the processes and policies for dealing within bullying are simply not sufficient. Sometimes, as my hon. Friend said, those policies are not implemented on the ground. It is all very well having them written down, but they have to put into practice. In contrast, a school such as Mossbourne community academy in Hackney—one of the most deprived parts of London—has an immaculate behaviour record.

In its inspection framework, in relation to behaviour, Ofsted draws a clear distinction between good schools and outstanding schools. In good schools, pupils are compliant with the rules, fearing the consequences if they misbehave; but in outstanding schools, pupils do not just comply, but take responsibility for their own behaviour. That is the gold standard that I am sure my hon. Friend and I both want to achieve throughout schools in this country.

I had lunch fairly recently with some pupils in the school canteen at Mossbourne academy, and I asked them about bullying. They told me that bullying does not happen in their school and said, “We’re not allowed to engage in verbal bullying.” They volunteered that information to me, which showed an acute awareness of what constitutes bullying and its impact on others. When such an approach works well, the effects are often seen in the wider community, too. On becoming an academy last September, a school in my constituency introduced a new blazer and tie uniform and shaped a clear ethos and identity for the school. Pupils’ behaviour improved in the school to such an extent that it was noticeable in the town. People have commented to me about the behaviour of young people in the town since the school had adopted that new approach to behaviour.

We must be clear about responsibilities outside schools. Under the Education and Inspections Act 2006, schools have powers to take measures to regulate the conduct of pupils off-site, including journeys to and from school. The best schools take that responsibility very seriously and use those powers when appropriate. A head teacher in Cumbria told me that he felt responsible not just as a head, but as a member of the local community. Any poor behaviour that he heard about in, say, the town during the weekend, he took up with pupils first thing on the Monday morning, and because it was a tight-knit community, he could often trace and track the perpetrators of the poor behaviour. Such behaviour creates a bigger challenge if the school is situated in a larger, urban city such as London, but the answer to the problem must be partnership.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

The Minister has set out some excellent actions to take within the school environment and now he is touching on actions to take outside that environment, such as on journeys to and from school, which the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) spoke about; but does that apply also to social network sites and cyber-bullying, which are not under the direct control of schools or teachers?

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising such an important issue. Dealing with cyber-bullying is important, and we are working with industry to make sure that, when offensive material appears on a social network, it is removed instantly. There is good guidance for teachers on how they should tackle incidents of cyber-bullying that are reported to them.