Technical and Vocational Education

Karen Lumley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

We will devolve our skills budgets to a regional, local level in England, because we believe that those decisions are best made locally.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is being very talkative, but what practical steps has he taken? How many skills and apprenticeship fairs, such as the one I held in Redditch on Friday, have he and his Front-Bench team held in their constituencies?

[Tristram Hunt]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for the work she has done to promote skills in Redditch. I have seen some great schools there that are combining vocational and academic work, such as the RSA academy, and I know how important that is.

Sadly, this Government have undermined careers advice. Thanks to their reforms, prisoners now have more access to careers advice than school pupils. In 2013 the Education Committee raised its concerns about

“the consistency, quality, independence and impartiality of careers guidance now being offered to young people.”

Similarly, Ofsted has found that only one in six schools offer individual careers guidance from a qualified external adviser. For the Labour party, this is a matter of both social justice and economic efficiency. For those young people without the networks and internships, decent careers guidance is essential. Similarly, the complexity of navigating a vocational technical course, mixing an apprenticeship with further education provision, demands decent advice and information. All the colleges I have visited, from Dudley to Chichester, Manchester to Tamworth and Lambeth to Stoke-on-Trent, complain that they are not being properly promoted to potential students.