Careers Service (Young People)

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to be called in this debate. I shall start with a confession: when I chaired the Education and Skills Committee—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

May I just say that we have nine Members left to speak, and that if the hon. Gentleman limits his speech to eight minutes it will help everybody?

[Mr Sheerman]

I was going to confess that when I was Chair of the Education Committee I never did an inquiry into careers, but in 2008 I was co-chair of the Skills Commission and we undertook a major inquiry into careers. Lord Boswell, Baroness Sharp and I were on the commission and we produced an all-party report, “Inspiration and Aspiration: Realising our Potential in the 21st Century.” Dame Ruth Silver, whom the Minister and anyone who knows anything about careers will know, the former principal of Lewisham college, was a very important influence on our inquiry, and she now chairs the Government advisory organisation that fell out with the Government recently.

We found pretty simple things. We found that, yes, information technology is very useful and that it will increasingly be used by many young people and older people, but at that stage—three years ago—it was used by only about 17% or 18%, which is not a lot. We also found that it was not enough in itself—face-to-face experience and trusted professionals were vital. There was no doubt that all the research, all the evidence that we took, showed it could not be done by technology alone, and that we blanked out many people by relying only on the technology and the internet.

We also found that yes, the careers service was not as good as it should have been. Anyone who does a PhD in future about the Conservatives’ enthralment with localism will have a wonderful time with the Minister’s speech tonight, because what is this localism? I intervened and said, “The trouble is that Connexions was patchy.” It is true that in every local government service I know, much is good in some things, but less is good in others and things are pretty average too much of the time. So how does one, believing in localism, raise the bar for careers advice? It is a great challenge, as Conservative Members will find. Pushing the responsibility back entirely on to schools, they will find the service very patchy indeed, especially if there are very few resources to some schools and better resources at others.

The Skills Commission report was accepted by all three parties and influenced all three manifestos, so there was the start of a good cross-party agreement on the need for high-quality careers advice—absolutely everyone from whom we took evidence agreed on that. But how do we push that forward? When we found that all the manifestos had been influenced by the cross-party consensus, we were very hopeful. But how did we get to the Government advisory group on the all-age careers service? The Labour Government of 2008 did not want an all-age careers service. They were eventually persuaded—again, there was cross-party consensus. All three main parties agreed on an all-age careers service, and they reconstituted it under a different name—the national careers service advisory group. I understand that it is now in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, with the Education Department visiting, rather than its being in the Education Department. I have some concerns, and I think hon. Members will have some concerns, about careers being put very securely in BIS rather than in the Education Department.

Responsibility for providing face-to-face services is, however, being transferred to schools, without funding. I have the report from the advisory group on the all-age careers service and the comments by Dame Ruth Silver about the very real problems with it. It says:

“The new National Careers Service will include face-to-face services for adults, but not for young people. Instead, its service for young people will be confined to telephone- and web-based services. Responsibility for providing the face-to-face services is being transferred to schools, without any transfer of funding: the previous provision of around £200 million per annum for the service for young people has been allowed to disappear.”

That is the Government’s advisory group speaking. These are the leading people in the country advising on careers. The report continues:

“There are widespread concerns about the destruction of careers services across the country, with heavy staff redundancies. At a time when young people are facing massive changes in further and higher education, and new apprenticeships—as well as high youth unemployment—stripping out the professional help available to them is not only foolhardy; it is potentially damaging to young people’s lives and ultimately to the economy.”

What a damning report by the Government’s advisory committee! It cannot be right to go in this direction.

As a result of this kind of localism, schools with few resources will have very little careers advice. That is the truth. At the same time, local authorities up and down the land, under pressure of resources, are getting rid of their careers services or slimming them down to the very bone. We will not recreate a culture of high-quality careers service professionals in that way, even though the Government asked Ruth Silver to chair a committee to determine how to increase the professional quality of the careers service.

Everything was going in the right direction, with all-party consensus. Localism could have worked in this respect if the money had followed local responsibility and accountability. I worked closely with the Minister, who was a good member of the Education and Skills Committee for some years, when I chaired it. He is a reasonable man, and he will understand that this is not a party political issue. Good-quality careers advice is absolutely essential to everyone of whatever age. I am one of those people who believe that it is shame and a stain on our country to have a thing called NEETs. I believe that anyone who is not in education, employment or training of whatever age is a NEET, and we cannot have them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, because I have been sitting here getting increasingly frustrated at the notion that history, geography, modern foreign languages, maths and science are the only subjects that will give a student the breadth of knowledge with which to go forward in their lives. Is the issue not about academic rigour and young people learning to learn and learning to evaluate what they learn? That is the important thing, not the subject that they are doing.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Interventions are getting a little bit too long.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Perhaps in due course she could tell me why Canada, France and Germany insist on those subjects being taken to age 16, and why all those countries are doing better than us in the OECD PISA—programme for international student assessment—tables.

The Government are taking absolutely the right approach of strengthening the core, getting rid of modules from exams, making rigorous assessments, and encouraging students to take the E-bac. It is so encouraging that this year the numbers of new entries to these subjects have gone up. We are also offering proper apprenticeships to get people the proper work experience that they need to build a successful career. We will not create careers with more hot air; we will create careers through real learning in real subjects and real jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

There are two speakers and 12 minutes left.