Adult and Further Education

Debate between Lia Nici and Flick Drummond

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lia Nici]

I thank my hon. Friend for his expertise, and he is absolutely right. However, many students when I was teaching struggled with their maths GCSE. They struggled with their basic skills and functional skills in numeracy. There was still a fairy tale, seemingly, that if someone had studied mathematics for 11 years in school and failed their GCSE, magically the further education sector—everybody seems to think it can do everything magically and often it does—in less than one year can produce a grade C or above, or a grade 4 or 5 and above, as the grades are now. There was this idea that someone who had failed at maths, hated maths and was scared about it could study for nine months part-time—maybe for one hour a week—in their college and would suddenly and magically have a maths GCSE. That is not the reality.

When I was head of department, all the mathematics we used to teach was applied, and further education has still not been able to do that across the board. That is often because we cannot find people who can teach maths confidently. Certainly we find it difficult to find people who can teach functional skills, numeracy or maths that is applied to the industry for which the students are coming to study. We have some real problems. For instance, I taught a group of level 2 media students once. I said to them, “I am giving you a tape measure, and I want you to go into the studio. We are going to calculate the square meterage of the studio so that we can do a lighting plan.” The students went off and within a minute they came back. They said, “Lia, we are having a problem here.” I said, “Why?” They said, “Because the tape measure is not long enough.” Think about that for a moment. Those students did not think that perhaps they had to measure it multiple times with one tape measure. Those are the basic skills we are talking about. I had to go into the studio and talk about it. That is the level we are at.

Schools are struggling to recruit maths teachers. I love the aspiration that everyone can be better at maths through to 18, but I always have the analogy of saying, “If you do not feel you are good at maths, equate that to something that you really don’t like”, because a lot of people have a fear of maths, or have been told over years, “You are not good enough at it”, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say to people, “Do you like horses?” They say, “No, I’m scared of horses.” I say, “Okay, so you’re scared of horses and horse-riding. You’ve never wanted to do it, or when you’ve tried it, you’ve hated it, or you’ve fallen off or you’ve never dared to get on. Tomorrow, I will make you go to a horse and get on it. You are going to have to ride it for an hour every week for nine months, but boy, you will be an Olympic showjumper by the end of it.” We need to think about how we will do these things, because we know as a country that we are a potential powerhouse in so many areas, but we have to think with common sense about how we will overcome some of the difficulties that we have.

[Mrs Drummond]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point, because Britain is an outlier in not doing maths to 18. Other countries must be able to do it, so we should look around the world to see how they are achieving it. We need to go from primary school straight up to the age of 18 and work out a proper syllabus that everyone can access.

[Lia Nici]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As we have been able to do with phonics and literacy-based subjects, where we have moved ahead quickly, we need that thinking from primary school age and all the way up. As wonderful as further education is—I know that it is—it cannot repair all the structural issues to do with maths within that year or two years of study. We all want that to happen, but we have got to think sensibly about how it will happen, because people who are Prime Minister and have been Chancellor find maths very easy, but perhaps the rest of us do not.

From a further education perspective, Grimsby Institute, where I worked for many years, is a fantastic college that works really hard with industry. It was a grade 1 “outstanding” college for many years and is currently grade 2. I know how hard the staff work and thank Ann Hardy, the chief executive officer, and her team for looking at new ways of doing things and innovating.

I also thank Peter Kennedy and his team at Franklin College, which is our sixth-form college. The week before last, I went to see “The Bridge”, a new facility that it has opened to recreate corporate ways of working so that its 16 to 19-year-olds and adult learners—and its staff—can work in a corporate, modern environment, preparing them for work. Franklin College has done all its renovations and new build without grant help; it has done that with really good financial management. That is really worth celebrating and shows how outstanding leadership and management can do great things in the community.

I say to the Minister that we know how fantastic further education is, and he knows that, but it cannot do everything, so we need to start thinking about how we can do things more creatively and more flexibly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) mentioned, we know that many colleges go out and deliver in the community. Many years ago, Grimsby Institute worked on blended learning, making sure that there was online provision and that it was going out in the community. We need to think differently in the environment we find ourselves in, with more vacancies than people available for the work, skills mismatches and a lack of skills in areas that we need to move forward.

Absolutely, apprenticeships can be the answer, but, with respect, they may be a little too complicated at the moment, and standards can often restrain our ambition. We know that we need standards, but my concern is that while large companies can become involved with apprenticeships, what about our sole traders and small and medium-sized enterprises? They really are the lifeblood of our businesses and industries, but it is a real challenge for them to take on apprentices with that right support. We do need to look at that.

I have concerns about some areas of T-levels. The aspiration for high quality is good, but while T-levels came out of the Sainsbury review of 2016, which was looking at parity between vocational and academic routes, I do not believe that they have parity with A-levels. That is not because people might think, “Academic is better.” No, actually T-levels are perhaps more demanding than A-levels in many ways. When an “academic student” goes to study A-levels, they can choose two, three or four subjects, plus work experience, a work placement or employment, so when they have finished their A-levels, they can go to university, get an apprenticeship or go and work—they have all those options at hand.

However, for T-levels, similar to national diplomas, students have to decide, for example, that they want to work in the health and social care industry, and have to study that with an employer. But what happens at the end if they discover that it is not what they want to do, or they feel that they are better at something else? If T-levels or something similar were smaller and modular, with a similar amount of guided learning hours to A-levels, a vocational student could do health and social care, travel and tourism, and digital media, and they could go and do some work experience as well. They could still build a T-level, but it would be multifaceted and very enjoyable. It would give vocational students much more choice about where they go from there, rather than just studying their health and social care level 3 T-level and that is it. They would then have to spend money later in life to do something else to go into another industry. I would like the Minister and his team to think about something like that.

The further education sector has always been the Cinderella of education but, along with schools, it is the kingpin to ensuring that this country can continue to be a powerhouse in future. I thank everyone in the further education sector, no matter what job they do—whether the cleaner or all the way through to the chief executive, and everyone in between. I thank them and appreciate their work, and I look forward to seeing colleagues again in the future.