Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I will confine my contribution to the part of the Bill dealing with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. I have heard it called both IFATE and IATE, so I think I will just stick to “the institute”. As a member of the Parliament choir, I am pleased to join the chorus of welcome for the Bill and for the extended role granted to the institute.

The Bill takes forward the development and oversight of high-quality, employer-led apprenticeships, with funding from the new apprenticeship levy. It marks a significant move in the direction of establishing technical and professional education as a real alternative to academic education, with comparable validity—something that we have been aiming for and talking about for so long. It aims to make a significant contribution to meeting the UK’s current and future skills needs in line with the Sainsbury review and the Government’s Post-16 Skills Plan.

I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I focus on specific areas where I have questions or concerns, mostly relating to lack of clarity on some of the Bill’s proposals and on how its aims will be delivered. Most of those concerns have already been raised by other noble Lords more eloquently than I could do, and with added anecdotes. My thoughts reflect helpful input I have received from organisations including City & Guilds, the Joint Council for Qualifications, the National Union of Students, Semta and the University and College Union, together of course with some of my own prejudices and predilections.

I am pleased that the membership of the institute’s board has now been announced, although not yet its chairman. This gives rise to some governance-related questions. Will the 15 technical education panels responsible for developing technical education standards also be employer led? The Bill describes them only as “a group of persons”, with no indication of how their membership should be made up. They surely need to include a good representation of the different interests involved, including a strong presence from employers.

What provision is there for the involvement of SME representatives as regards apprenticeship standards? I believe that more than 50% of apprentices are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises and I assume that the availability of jobs is similar. How will the institute relate to other bodies in the field such as Ofqual and how will it be held to account and its performance assessed? What can the Minister tell us about the involvement of apprentices and learners themselves in its governance? The Minister in the other place, Robert Halfon MP, said that an apprentice panel would be in place by April, and told MPs that he was confident that the institute would set up a similar panel for technical education students in due course. Why could such arrangements not be provided for in the Bill?

Several organisations and noble Lords have expressed concerns about the proposed single-supplier franchise model, whereby only one awarding organisation will be licensed for each of the 15 routes. This seems to run the risk of leading to entrenched monopoly incumbents in each area, unfettered by competitive pressures, and is an approach that has always previously been rejected, including in the general qualifications market, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned. What is the Government’s reason for preferring this approach to a more competitive, multi-supplier model, albeit with sufficiently rigorous entry requirements to assure quality and reliability?

Clarification is also needed on the requirement for copyright in all relevant course documents to be transferred to the institute, which could be particularly problematic for awarding organisations that compete outside England, in the devolved nations and/or internationally, based on their own intellectual property in qualification and assessment materials. There appears to be some confusion about the intention behind the power given by the Bill to the Secretary of State to issue technical education certificates, and how such certificates would complement and add value to rather than duplicate other recognised technical qualifications.

The most significant of my own hobby-horses, shared by several other noble Lords today, relates to the regrettable absence from the Bill of any reference to careers education. Both your Lordships’ Digital Skills Committee, on which I served, and more recently the Social Mobility Committee, highlighted the inadequacy of current provision in this field. I shall certainly watch with interest for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in this area, which I will expect to support.

Significant improvements are being made, with the development of the National Careers Service and especially through the work of the Careers & Enterprise Company, which is potentially the best thing to have happened in careers education for a long time. I was really encouraged by what I heard at a breakfast last week held in this House and hosted by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham. Are they getting all the support they need from government? When will the long-awaited careers education strategy, promised imminently by Robert Halfon, be published?

One of the mantras during my time in business was, “What gets measured gets managed”. Does the Bill not offer a good opportunity to ensure that schools are rigorously measured in this area—for example as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, suggested, by requiring that no school could achieve an “outstanding” or even “good” Ofsted rating without delivering good-quality careers education?

I look forward to hearing about other issues in relation to the Bill. Will it help to raise the level of not only STEM skills, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned, but also digital skills? They are essential to our future competitiveness. What will be its impact on the important work of commercial training providers, many of which play a vital role in meeting otherwise unfulfilled needs? Having run a business in this field myself, I was somewhat taken aback by the Sainsbury review’s statement that,

“ideally, all publicly-subsidised technical education … should be delivered under not-for-profit arrangements”.

Might the Minister make some comment on that?

In closing, I say that I strongly welcome the Bill and wish the Minister well in taking it forward in this House and pursuing its ambitious and important aim of helping to bring about a real and much-needed step change in the quality, perceived value and attractiveness not just of apprenticeships but of technical and professional education in general.