Times Education Commission Report

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, it is an unexpected pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, as I have been promoted one place up the batting order. Much of what I want to say has already been powerfully covered by other noble Lords, but I am afraid not yet by me. I will try not to be unnecessarily repetitive.

Education is a fundamental building block of our national infrastructure. To support and enhance our productivity, competitiveness and growth, we need people with the right skills, knowledge and aspirations to drive our economy and nurture our society. Only education can meet those needs, so it is disappointing that, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, pointed out, education so often seems to take something of a back seat in relation to other policy areas, despite being so crucial to all of them.

The Times Education Commission, with its aim

“to examine Britain’s whole education system and consider its future in the light of the Covid-19 crisis, declining social mobility, new technology and the changing nature of work”,

is therefore greatly to be applauded, as is the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, in obtaining this debate. The report contains numerous ideas and recommendations which deserve serious consideration. I welcome its focus on the content of education—what the curriculum needs to deliver and how it should be assessed—more than on its structure and funding. I will focus on just a few of the commission’s specific recommendations which seem to me to be particularly important.

I will first consider the idea of a curriculum built around a new British baccalaureate, modelled on the highly regarded international baccalaureate. The commission suggests that this could encompass both a diploma programme with a greater emphasis on academic subjects and a career-related programme with a stronger vocational and technical focus, combining learning with work experience. Students could mix and match elements of both programmes and all of them would undertake an extended project and some community service. Importantly, digital skills would be embedded throughout their learning and all pupils should have access to a laptop or tablet.

This approach, which the commission states would be designed to be

“at least as demanding as A-levels”,

would offer major advantages. It should give extra impetus to the long-overdue elimination of the gap in parity of esteem between academic and vocational education—between knowledge and skills, if you like—by ensuring that all students have the option to pursue elements of both according to their own interests and talents.

I strongly welcome the suggestion that

“All secondary pupils should have the chance of work experience”—


but would leave out “the chance of”. All students, including primary students, should have work experience, full stop. It must be of high quality, with the quantity specified by the Baker clause seen as an absolute minimum.

My own former small training business used to run what we called “alternative work experience” programmes for groups of London students for whom their schools had been unable to find suitable work experience placements at the end of the summer term—often students whom they regarded as least likely to do well, or at risk of becoming NEET. One of the most rewarding aspects of these programmes was seeing how the aspirations, interests and enthusiasms of the students often blossomed when they were introduced to a range of very varied working environments of which they had previously had little or no conception: from office jobs in business and accountancy, to hotels and restaurants, car showrooms, city farms, construction sites, leisure attractions, fire stations, film and TV studios, tourism companies—I could go on. For many of them this was a truly eye-opening experience, and another of the rewards for us was seeing the astonished reactions of some of the teachers when they returned to their schools and gave enthusiastic presentations about what they had seen and done during the programme, what they had learned, and how it had affected their career aspirations. How can young people be expected to make sensible career choices if they have had no experience at all of the range of different routes and working environments available to them?

Another important recommendation of the commission is that

“Sport, music, drama, art, debating and dance should be an integral part of the timetable for all children, not an optional ‘extracurricular’ add on”.


This could go a long way to reversing the crowding out of education in music and other creative subjects by the EBacc, which has resulted in an alarming decline in GCSE and A-level take-up in these subjects, and an ever-widening gap between fee-paying schools, which recognise their value and importance, and many state schools, which lack the funding, resources and incentives, if not the will, to give them their proper place in the curriculum.

The “electives premium” for secondary schools proposed by the commission is an imaginative approach to tackling this and I hope the Minister will indicate how the Government might respond to it—perhaps the idea would lend itself to a pilot scheme to assess its benefits. This is also an area where greater collaboration between state and independent schools, as called for by the commission, could play an important part. Perhaps I should declare my interest as chair of a charity promoting classical music teaching in schools.

The final recommendation of the commission’s 12-point plan for education is that there should be:

“A 15-year strategy for education, drawn up in consultation with business leaders, scientists, local mayors, civic leaders and cultural figures, putting education above short-term party politics and bringing out the best in our schools, colleges and universities”


—amen to that. Adapting and enhancing our education system so that it better meets the needs of the world we now find ourselves in, the needs of our young people—not forgetting us older people—and the needs of the nation and the Government in pursuit of prosperity, well-being and growth will never be a short-term challenge, or straightforward politically. It needs time and commitment, beyond the span of a single Government, with a clear idea of where we want to go and how we plan to get there. It needs widespread consensus, buy-in and support across parties, business sectors and regions. It needs to complement and reinforce other strategic goals and policy priorities, notably in relation to meeting recognised skills needs and our net-zero commitments in the green agenda.

The commission has performed a valuable service in proposing ideas that could feature in such a strategy. So I find it disappointing that the Government’s response—and even the response of the Minister, who we know is so strongly committed to ambitious educational reform—has been so dismissive of ideas such as a British baccalaureate, and has said that they have no plans to respond to the commission’s report.

There are a number of questions that I hope the Minister will address in her response to this debate. First, will she look again at the case for some sort of government response to, or at least commentary on, the report? It seeks to generate a debate on a wide range of fundamental issues concerning the future of education policy, and the Government surely need to encourage and contribute to that debate.

Secondly, are there specific elements of the commission’s 12-point plan which the Government might consider implementing or at least exploring further, such as the electives premium? Will the Minister look at how the commission’s findings might be relevant to proposals in the current Schools Bill, with a view to amending the Bill to address them, or even replacing it with a more ambitious Bill tackling issues concerning curriculum and assessment in addition to structure, along the lines proposed by the commission? More broadly, how will the Government seek to ensure that the central importance of education to our national infrastructure and well-being is better reflected across the policy spectrum?

My hope is that the Minister’s answers to this debate will make it clear that this excellent piece of work by the Times Education Commission will not become just another ambitious, comprehensive, broadly based, well-researched exercise destined to languish on numerous bookshelves as a sad reminder of what might be achieved if the challenges facing education were given the priority and emphasis they deserve. It would redound to the Government’s credit if, instead, they seized the opportunity to use this report as a basis for starting a genuine national debate on a longer-term, sustainable approach to meeting our future educational needs, ideally with a 15-year strategy at its heart.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Amendments 156 and 171 address the issue of school land and buildings that may not be safe. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, outlined, Amendment 156 asks for condition reports on school buildings and land within a year of the Bill being passed. As we have heard from her, there are real worries that too many schools have major condition problems because school budgets have made it impossible to keep buildings safe and there is no money from central government.

I am particularly delighted that the noble Baroness referred to the Welsh 21st Century Schools plan. Kirsty Williams, while Lib Dem Welsh Education Secretary in the Senedd working in coalition with Labour, led with local government on this. It just shows what can be achieved when there is a will to do it. However, I am afraid that England at the moment is a different story. The Treasury is not providing funds for major structural repairs and rebuilds even when there is danger for children and staff.

One such school is Tiverton High School, which is in need of a multi-million-pound overhaul. The Environment Agency says that it is not a safe place for children, with staff having to deal with rain pouring into leaking classrooms; worse, there have been a number of incidents involving asbestos being exposed and then damaged, which is dangerous to both pupils and staff. Even worse, the school sits on a flood plain and requires flood protection. The school was promised a complete rebuild in 2009. It got planning permission and got detailed designs ready over the next four years, but the money never followed. It is vital that we know the condition of school land and buildings across England, and Amendment 171 says that, where a building is unsafe, the Secretary of State should take responsibility for it.

Under Part 1 of this Bill, the school—currently a foundation school—would become an academy. I ask the Minister: does the Secretary of State become responsible for the condition and fabric of school building and land under the extensive powers listed in Part 1 or is the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, necessary? It seems extraordinary that children are required to go to school in a building which other bodies have said is unsafe, the governors and local authority do not have resources to deal with, and central government just refuses to provide the funding for.

Amendment 167 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, calls for the Secretary of State to ensure that all schools are provided with defibrillators, in school and in sports facilities, which I support. Oliver King, who was 12, died of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, a condition which kills 12 young people under 35 every week. The Oliver King Foundation has been campaigning for a defibrillator in every school. Last September the Secretary of State for Education announced that every school should have a defibrillator.

In an Oral Question in your Lordships’ House on 15 June, the Health Minister said in response to a question from me:

“while we require defibrillators to be purchased when a school is refurbished or built, one of the things we are looking at is how we can retrofit this policy. We are talking to different charity partners about the most appropriate way to do this. What we have to recognise is that it is not just the state that can do this; there are many civil society organisations and local charities that are willing to step up and be partners with us, and we are talking to all of them.”—[Official Report, 15/6/22; col. 1582.]

While I know that the DfE has been working with the department for health and the NHS to make this happen, including schools being able to purchase defibrillators via the DHSC at an advantageous price, only a few thousand appear to have been purchased so far. The Health Minister is clearly expecting schools to find benefactors to fund life-saving defibrillators at a time when there are many other pressures on school budgets. How do the Government plan to enable all 22,000 schools to be given defibrillators now, not just when their school is rebuilt?

It looks as if we may need to support the amendment in front of us today about defibrillators. This is urgent and I hope that the Minister will give it some good consideration.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 167 in this group, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. He was all ready to move it late last Wednesday evening with my support, but is unable to do so today as he has to be in Wales for important meetings as chair of governors at the Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools. I am pleased to speak to the amendment and grateful to my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson for her support, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for what she has just said.

We have previously discussed a number of issues that should be mandatory parts of the curriculum. One of these is first aid training. As well as that, every school should have access to defibrillators. I use the plural intentionally, as does this amendment, because one may not be enough. The Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools, for example, have five defibrillators, one of which, close to the cricket nets in the pavilion, has been used to save a life at a school sporting event.

There are some 60,000 sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year in the UK. Survival depends on prompt action such as CPR or defibrillation. The chances of survival decrease by 10% with every minute that passes without such action and, in fact, only one person in 10 survives.

Of course, the great majority of such cardiac arrests affect older people, most often in their homes or workplaces, but a significant minority of cases are younger people, specifically those who are fitter and more active. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, cited the fact that sudden arrhythmic death syndrome kills 12 young people under 35 every week. Young athletes are three times as likely to suffer cardiac arrests as non-athletes, so access to defibrillators is important not just in a school’s main learning areas but equally, if not more importantly, in its sports facilities.

In my recent Question on defibrillators, I mentioned that devices are beginning to appear on the market that are much smaller, lighter and cheaper than existing models—up to a 10th of the size, weight and price. A recent parliamentary drop-in featured a personal defibrillator small enough to fit in my jacket pocket, which is expected to sell for about £200. I know that exhibits are frowned on, but I actually have a training version of such a defibrillator in my jacket pocket.

Developments like this will open up new opportunities for increasing access to defibrillators and making them much more easily available and locatable in schools, workplaces and homes—indeed, wherever there are risks of cardiac arrest and where defibrillators should be easily accessible, even in sports coaches’ kit bags or in private homes.

Of course, there is limited value in increasing access to defibrillators if people are not familiar with when and how to use them. This is an area where the UK lags behind many other countries. While our overall survival rate is only one in 10—and in some parts of the UK it is a great deal lower even than that—in Denmark, where training in CPR is mandatory in schools and for anyone applying for a driving licence, the survival rate tripled within five years. Italy has introduced new laws mandating defibrillators in public buildings, on transport, at sporting events and in schools, and has a cardiac arrest awareness day every October. I will mention one other example, in the USA: Seattle has increased its survival rate to 62% through a city-wide training programme. There are many other examples to show that first aid training and access to defibrillators actually save significant numbers of lives.

Training, both in basic first aid techniques, including the use the defibrillators, and in recognising the symptoms of sudden cardiac arrest, can easily be done in schools. It takes only a few hours, is readily available at a reasonable cost from organisations such as the British Heart Foundation, British Red Cross, Resuscitation Council UK, St John Ambulance and St Andrew’s First Aid in Scotland, is relatively inexpensive and is practical, enjoyable and confidence building for young people—and indeed older ones, as I can testify from having had such training here in Parliament some years ago when there was a first aid APPG. Incidentally, the intranet lists 27 locations where there are defibrillators on the Parliamentary Estate; it also says that

“Staff should familiarise themselves with where the Defibrillators are located.”


I shall not speculate on how many of us could locate one with confidence.

Amendment 167, from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, represents an important first step towards reducing the number of deaths from sudden cardiac arrests in and around schools, including at their sports facilities. Defibrillators are already required in all new or refurbished schools; it makes no sense that they should not be a mandatory part of every school’s first aid equipment. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord, Moynihan, would argue that they should be as common in public places as fire extinguishers. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment, or at least spell out firm plans to ensure that defibrillators will become mandatory for all schools—obviously with support for how they can afford them. Failing that, this is an issue that I, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and perhaps others may well wish to pursue further on Report.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Amendment 167, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and my noble friend Lord Aberdare. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests in the register, including as president of the Local Government Association.

As my noble friend Lord Aberdare, has already pointed out, sudden arhythmic death syndrome kills 12 young people under 35 in the UK every week. Possibly what is less known is that it has been estimated that up to 270 young people a year die in schools—lives that are surely worth saving. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and I have worked on this area for a number of years, but, for me, more specifically in a sports setting. However, as 40% of sports facilities in England are behind school gates, which also have increasing community use, and as there is a greater drive to open school facilities in the summer holidays, it makes sense to have defibs in every single school.

I know that if the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, were here, he would say that noble Lords on all sides of this Chamber have made the case for ensuring that defibrillators are not just a voluntary addition to a school’s first aid equipment and should not just be required in new or refurbished schools, as is currently the policy. There should not be differentiation between new schools and older schools. Surely all lives are equally important. However, looking at the data from NHS Supply Chain, its website says that there are 23,000 eligible schools in the UK that could have access to defibs through its scheme to make use of bulk purchasing. As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would have pointed out, the Government need to go further and ensure that there are defibs in all 32,163 schools in the UK. I wonder if the noble Baroness the Minister is able to say how many schools in the UK have defibs and how many do not. Last year, Gavin Williamson, when Secretary of State for Education, was on record in another place as saying that the Government would be looking at

“changing the regulations, which are underpinned by secondary legislation, to ensure that all schools have defibrillators in the future and hopefully prevent such a tragedy visiting more families.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 19.]

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, pointed out, the Oliver King Foundation has done a tremendous job in getting 5,500 defibrillators into schools, saving 56 lives. The Joe Humphries Memorial Trust has done a huge amount to get them in to use. I was at an event in the north-east of England yesterday with Rotary North East, and its One Life initiative is amazing. In the last two years, a small team of three people has worked with community groups, individuals and local councillors in the north-east to offer advice and guidance on the subject and to promote the installation of further public access defibrillators across the region. It is fantastic that these groups are doing so much good work, but it is far too ad hoc.

Should this amendment be passed, secondary legislation could be introduced to focus on the types of AEDs; their siting; training requirements; how many should be in our schools; and where should they be placed for easy access. I have read too many cases of lives that potentially could have been saved. This should be an open door in terms of protecting and supporting everyone in the school setting. Would the noble Baroness the Minister agree to undertake a meeting with me, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, my noble friend Lord Aberdare and other interested Peers to discuss what steps we can take to keep the door open on this conversation?

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 91 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. Helping children to understand the different opportunities and career paths that might be open to them, what sort of work they involve and how to pursue them is one of the most important tasks for schools to undertake—in partnership with parents and employers.

It is therefore disappointing that the Bill says so little about careers education, information, advice and guidance. The schools White Paper in March included commitments about careers education that do not appear in the Bill, such as the one covered by Amendment 91 on launching a new careers programme for primary schools in areas of disadvantage and the one on improving professional development for teachers and leaders on careers education, including strengthening understanding of apprenticeships and technical routes.

The importance of starting careers education in primary schools was recognised in the 2017 Careers Strategy. Its aim has been well described by the Careers & Enterprise Company, CEC, which has done so much valuable work in promoting and supporting careers education. It states:

“Career-related learning in primary schools is about broadening pupils’ horizons, challenging stereotypes and helping them develop the skills and sense of self that will enable them to reach their full potential.”


The CEC has conducted a number of research studies and pilot programmes both to demonstrate the effectiveness of primary careers education in achieving these aims and to establish what approaches work best in practice. From these studies it is clear that there is not only a clear appetite for careers education in primary schools but growing evidence that such education has a positive impact on overall school engagement and attainment, raises pupils’ aspirations, enhances their motivation and helps to clarify their life goals and break down biases about the world of work. There is plenty of good experience, best practice and resources to draw on, such as the CEC’s report What Works? Career-related Learning in Primary Schools, the Career Development Institute’s Career Development Framework: Handbook for Primary Schools, and the Teach First report that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to.

I strongly support this amendment but ideally I would like it to be extended, with a requirement that the delivery of a careers programme within the framework required by proposed new subsection (1) to be inserted by the amendment should be mandatory for all primary schools. There are three questions I ask the Minister in responding to this amendment. First, what are the Government’s plans to ensure that all primary schools have a careers programme in line with the Gatsby benchmarks? Secondly, how will they ensure that adequate resources and facilities are available to deliver these plans, including not just financial assistance for disadvantages schools but an adequate pipeline of fully trained and qualified career guidance professionals, as well as careers leaders in schools? Thirdly, what action will they take to ensure that all teachers learn about careers education as part of their training?

I also support Amendment 158, which sets out a number of subjects which should be a mandatory feature of every school’s curriculum, including digital skills, financial literacy and life skills. In my view, one of these life skills should be first aid training, which I shall say more about, noble Lords will probably be relieved to hear, when we get to Amendment 167. It always astonishes me that skills such as these, which are so vital to everyone, and which schools are ideally placed to teach, are not taught as a matter of course. Digital literacy in particular is rapidly becoming a category of functional skills complementary to, if not on a par with, literacy and numeracy. This was suggested by the House of Lords Select Committee on Digital Skills in 2015, which pointed out that

“Digital literacy is an essential tool that underpins other subjects and almost all jobs.”


I support the other amendments in this group, including the amendment on British values introduced by my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries, and Amendment 171I tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, to make work experience mandatory—to which I add only that it needs to be high-quality work experience.

If we are looking for the Schools Bill to help create an education system that is designed to meet the growing needs of the future, it should ensure that all young people are taught the subjects listed in Amendment 158, are made aware of the values set out in Amendment 168, undertake high-quality work experience as required by Amendment 171I and are helped to start thinking about their own career aspirations and potential from primary age onwards, in line with Amendment 91. I hope all these requirements and amendments will find their way into the Bill.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Shipley and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on Amendment 91, to which I added my name, to ensure that careers education is supported in primary schools. It is really important that young people are introduced to a range of careers before they become convinced that some jobs are boys’ jobs and some are for girls. We need women engineers, firefighters, police and military officers, just as we need men to become nurses, teachers, hairdressers and carers. If very young children are encouraged to see where their interests lie, it will serve them well later on.

There was a wonderful programme—I do not know if it is still going—called Drawing the Future, where primary children drew their ambitions. One eight year-old girl had drawn a very accurate picture of an RAF Hawk aircraft and written “When I grow up, I want to be an RAF Red Arrows pilot”—no matter that the Red Arrows have hardly ever had women; that did not daunt her. What a wonderful aspiration. She and the other prize-winners were then greeted by an appropriate adult in their chosen field, and an elegant woman pilot appeared to give her a prize and talk to her about her aspirations.

Apprenticeship Levy Scheme

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. We are doing a lot of work to make sure that we can connect young people in schools and colleges with employers and providers much earlier in their final academic year—rather like how they connect with universities—to give them confidence about where they are going. On my noble friend’s specific question, I say that the department has achieved an average of 2.6% of our employees over the four years of the target. We are increasing our apprenticeship starts, and I am delighted to say that one of my excellent private secretaries started in the department as an apprentice.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, as an officer of the Apprenticeships APPG, I hear two constant concerns from employers about the levy: its lack of flexibility and the difficulties for small employers wishing to offer apprenticeships. I too welcome the concept of flexi-job apprenticeship agencies to smooth the path for SMEs, but there are only 16 of these so far. What are the Government’s actual goals for SME apprenticeships, and how do they plan to achieve them, given that current incentives and support schemes are clearly not working well enough?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is a bit harsh; we are very focused on SMEs, in part because of the productivity potential that apprentices can offer them, but also because of the opportunities that they offer to young people. I am not aware that we have published targets for this, but it is a particular focus in the department.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments in this group that have my name on them, Amendments 9 and 11. Both deal with smaller aspects of this, although we have a big report coming through on special educational needs, in which I know the noble Baroness is active.

I would like to know where and how, in this envisaged system—or perhaps let us call it a wished-for system; let us not give it that degree of solidity—special educational needs will fit in. At the moment, if there is a priority that comes above them, they tend to get squashed going down. For instance, there is an ongoing row about systematic synthetic phonics, which is the preferred way to teach English but does not work that well for many dyslexics. In addition, people with attention deficit disorder do not like it; it is a different way of working. You therefore have to work smarter, or in a different way, to get the best results out of those groups in a basic interaction. There will be other examples; for instance, mathematics is also covered by this, because you have to have different learning patterns. Dyslexics like me have different learning processes in our heads, which work slightly differently from those of the majority of people.

That is not insurmountable; there are ways around it and lots have been found, but you have to do it. If you have one way of doing this, there will be problems for those groups who do not have those learning patterns. I was speaking only about small numbers there but maybe half of those with identified special educational needs would probably be covered by these groups already. There are others with more complex patterns. The Government will need to work differently. How will the recommendations of the review work through and counter other considerations? If the noble Baroness can give us some idea of the Government’s thinking at the moment, I will be grateful.

On extracurricular activity—I would say this, would I not?—the fact of the matter is that sport is one of the best ways of improving mental health. It releases all the right chemicals in your body. Basically, it is a chemical treatment for mental health—end of. It reduces stress and tension, as does the correct use of special educational needs support. If you have less to worry about, you are less stressed and less likely to experience a trigger point for a mental health condition. How will these things be worked in? What safeguards do activities have in these areas—and others, if the noble Baroness wishes to expand on that? Is Committee a discussion? We need an idea of how, when you have to work differently to get the best out of the system, you will do it to get to the positions and the approach coming through in the rest of the Bill. How is it working and how will you make those small changes? Some will be big structural ones.

Talking about extracurricular activities such as sport, music and drama, one of the big things the Government should do to make sure that people carry on doing those things is to link the activities within the school with those who do them outside on an amateur basis. There are very well-established models, some of which have worked and some of which have been removed but which worked quite well. How is this all working and how is it going forward? If the Minister could give us a little idea of the Government’s thinking on that, that would be helpful, if not for this Bill then certainly for future debates.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I shall say just a few words in support of Amendment 22, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox—assuming I am not jumping the gun, because they have not introduced yet; I assume they will do so during the wind-up. I would have put my name to it had I spotted it when I went through the Marshalled List, but I missed it.

I share the widespread bafflement and uncertainty about what the Bill means for what happens inside schools, not least in relation to the curriculum. One of those things needs to be careers information, advice and guidance, which hardly figures in the Bill, other than as one of the 20 rapidly becoming notorious examples listed in Clause 1, whose future seems somewhat uncertain. Work experience is a key element of the Gatsby benchmarks for best practice in careers education, and it needs to be more than just a week or two at a local employer, making coffee, running errands or just sitting idly about wondering how to pass the time—which I know has been the experience of some young people.

Standards for work experience are certainly needed, which is why I welcome that amendment, although from the debate so far I am far from clear how such standards should be set, let alone enforced, within the system being created by the Bill. I hope the Minister will be able to say something about how the Government will ensure, even if not in the Bill, that all schoolchildren receive work experience of a sufficient standard.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 8, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and talked about by many noble Lords. I have some reservations and concerns about putting mental health in the Bill, but there are some caveats. I absolutely agree that the lockdowns created problems for many young people: I was concerned about the closure of schools, and many young people were certainly discombobulated by that. I am also very concerned about the state of child and adolescent mental health services and want them improved; there is no disputing that.

My concern is that, if anything, too much of a therapeutic ethos has entered schools in a way that I do not think is that helpful. Look at the language that many primary schoolchildren use: they talk about anxiety, trauma, depression and stress. You might think that that counters what I am saying, but I think it implies that the preoccupations of adults have been adopted by very young children, who are adopting the language of mental health to describe the problems they are going through.

As the children get older, deadlines, exams and so on are now described as creating mental health episodes, stress and so on. The language of PTSD has also entered many sixth forms, with sixth-formers saying they are having post-traumatic stress disorder, of all things, triggered by a curriculum that they find offensive—very much aping the language of safe space and cancel culture activism in universities. It is entering schools as well.

When I talk to teachers I know, they say that there are well-being rooms which are packed all the time. I do not think that is necessarily because everybody has mental health problems but because everything is seen through the prism of well-being. We are talking about schools where therapists are replacing the pastoral care that should come straightforwardly through teachers. The concern is that this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby every problem—the problems ordinarily associated with puberty, for example—is seen through the prism of mental health.

Many people who work in CAMHS worry that this means that young people now see themselves as vulnerable and become less resilient as a consequence. The elastic and ever-expanding definition of mental ill-health can also have serious implications for people who are young and mentally ill. Where you have an elastic definition, serious incidents involving people with mental health problems can be overlooked in a tidal wave of self-diagnosis and young people seeing themselves in that way. I ask us at least to pause to consider whether the mental health crisis is all that it seems on the surface, and I would certainly not want mental health written into the Bill by this House.

Schools: Creative Subjects and the English Baccalaureate

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To the extent that it is within my gift, I will do my best.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, last week, the Incorporated Society of Musicians published a report entitled Music: A Subject in Peril?, based on a survey of more than 500 music teachers. Some 93% of respondents said that the EBacc and/or Progress 8 had caused huge damage to music in schools, resulting in courses not running and music departments shrinking. What reassurance can the Minister give that the refreshed national plan for music education will address these issues and that teachers will be consulted on it before it is published?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The national plan has been developed with an expert panel, of which the noble Lord is aware, and that panel consulted extensively during its work—through forums, surveys and other mechanisms—with teachers, students, parents and other experts. We very much look forward to its publication.

Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and wish the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, success in piloting it through this House. I am delighted to hear that it has support from the Government. I am grateful for the briefings I have received from the Careers & Enterprise Company, the Careers Development Institute and Teach First, all of which have played such an important part in completing the careers education jigsaw that has been taking encouraging shape in recent years.

As befits a Private Member’s Bill, this is a relatively modest piece of the jigsaw. I entirely support its aim of extending the duty to provide careers guidance to all students in state-funded secondary education. Apart from that, I have little to add about the Bill, as far as it goes, though I slightly regret that it does not go a bit further. I will mention three missing pieces of the jigsaw, which I hope the Minister will comment on in her response.

First, I echo the argument from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that careers guidance should be extended even further to include primary education. So many of children’s aspirations and attitudes are formed at primary school age and it can only be beneficial for them to gain awareness of the world of opportunities available to them, beyond what they know from friends and family or see in films and television or on social media. As the noble Lord said, this could be key to increasing social mobility. Some 90% of primary teachers surveyed in 2019 believed that career-related learning, supported by employers, can challenge stereotypes about what subjects and jobs boys and girls are interested in. I ask the Minister what thinking there is in government about a possible framework for careers learning in primary schools—possibly based on the Birmingham example that the noble Lord mentioned—and how it might be funded.

Secondly, I worry about the pipeline of highly qualified careers professionals. How confident is the Minister that there will be enough such professionals to meet the needs for independent, high-quality careers information, advice and guidance, including personal guidance, not least after the expansion that this Bill would bring about? A recent CDI survey of careers professionals found that over a quarter of respondents were likely to leave the profession within two years, with poor pay and benefits being the biggest driver and cited by 40%. Action may be needed to promote the profession itself as a career opportunity, offering rewards more commensurate with its importance.

Thirdly, more work is needed to embed careers education throughout the school curriculum, across all subjects. The CEC has a programme with Pinewood Studios and the Academies Enterprise Trust developing resources and lesson plans to demonstrate to students from years 7 to 10 how the maths that they study relates to actual jobs in television, film, production and management. More such programmes are needed, including training and support for subject teachers themselves, with careers awareness built into every stage of their professional development, as promised in the Skills for Jobs White Paper. What can the Minister tell us about plans in this area?

Many other pieces of the skills education jigsaw still need to be put into place and I regret the lack of a refreshed careers strategy outlining the overall picture. The strategy launched in 2017 provided much of the recent momentum and, without such a strategy, there is a danger of numerous individual initiatives, worthy in themselves, not forming a coherent whole. To cite one example: we have a much-improved careers system and a focus on apprenticeships, yet hardly any of the apprentices I meet heard about their apprenticeship from their schools.

I wish this Bill well and look forward to hearing from the Minister how she and her colleagues plan to fill remaining gaps in the jigsaw so that the welcome progress made in careers education over recent years is maintained. Nothing could be more important, both for the nation and for our young people.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I join your Lordships in thanking my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing forward this Bill, and I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. I am also grateful to my honourable friend the Member for Workington for his work on this important Bill, and I congratulate him on ensuring that it passed through the other place.

High-quality careers guidance prepares young people for what comes next. It connects young people from all backgrounds to education and training opportunities that lead to great jobs—as my noble friend Lady Altmann said, not just one great job but several over a career. Furthermore, careers guidance is an essential underpinning to the Government’s skills reform, and that is why I am happy to lend my support, and that of the Government, to this Bill.

The cross-party support apparent in the other place shows that there is agreement in both Houses that careers guidance in secondary schools is vital and, in particular, on the benefits of inspiring our young people about a range of great careers, raising aspirations and encouraging them to maximise their talent and skills. The Government support the Bill because we want to level up the country, give access to opportunity and allow talent to flourish—as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, whether that be in the locality you grew up or outside it.

As we emerge from this pandemic, good-quality careers advice is essential to build a workforce that is dynamic and flexible. It is critical that young people are provided with guidance on future labour market opportunities and growth sectors, so that they can learn the skills they need to be successful in our fast-paced and ever-evolving jobs market—a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, mentioned.

My noble friend challenged me on whether the Government would stick with the programme, and I am pleased to reassure him that in the Skills for Jobs White Paper, we committed to extending careers hubs, career leader training, digital support and the enterprise adviser networks—the employer volunteers—to all secondary schools and colleges in England. Your Lordships will remember that that recommendation was in the Augar review, and we accepted it. My noble friend explained the Bill very ably. It is a simple but effective Bill, and I will not repeat what it aims to achieve, but I shall attempt to address some of the points raised by your Lordships today.

I know that my noble friend Lord Baker and I do not agree on absolutely every aspect of widening pupil access to alternative providers, but we agree on the principle of it, and we agree that there are still too many schools failing to comply with provider access legislation. Your Lordships will be aware that, through the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, we aim to strengthen the law so that all schools must offer at least three encounters with providers of approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships for pupils in years 8 to 13. For the first time, we will introduce parameters around the content of these encounters to safeguard their quality.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lord Holmes raised the important issue of careers provision for those students with special educational needs and disabilities. The Bill extends careers provision to all pupils in state secondary education, including those in mainstream schools with special educational needs provision, and in special schools. The Careers & Enterprise Company works with career leaders to design and deliver career education programmes tailored to the needs of young people with special educational needs and disabilities. All mainstream and special schools have been invited to be involved in the Careers & Enterprise Company’s inclusion community of practice, which operates out of 32 career hubs and currently reaches 628 educational establishments. This national community of best practice sharing was established to enable young people with special educational needs to be much better supported in their careers education, and this will be rolled out to all careers hubs in the next academic year.

I do not want to dwell on the minimum education requirements raised by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, but I remind him that we are consulting on them; this is not a decision.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox and Lady Morris of Yardley, rightly talked about the importance of work experience. The careers statutory guidance makes it clear that schools and colleges should follow the Gatsby benchmarks. They are evidence-based, as the noble Baroness opposite rightly challenged, and offer both personal guidance and experience of work as part of their career strategy for pupils.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Aberdare, mentioned the value of engaging children in primary schools. Of course, they are right that this has the potential to broaden horizons and raise aspirations. The Careers & Enterprise Company has produced a suite of resources to support the delivery of these activities in primary schools, and we support programmes such as Primary Futures that help to broaden students’ aspirations at an earlier stage.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked for a clearer careers strategy. He may be aware that the Government have appointed Professor Sir John Holman as the independent strategic adviser on careers guidance. He is currently advising us on greater local and national alignment between the National Careers Service and the Careers & Enterprise Company. He will also advise on the development of a cohesive and coherent careers system for the long term; we expect to receive his recommendations this summer.

As we have heard from your Lordships, we cannot underestimate how important careers advice is. The Bill will help to make sure that every young person in a state secondary school, whatever their background and wherever they live in the country, can get on in life. I thank your Lordships for their contributions, which the Government are pleased to support; I urge the House to do the same.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister has made no reference to my concern about whether careers professionals will be available in sufficient number and quality to deliver the ambitious plans that the Government have outlined.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We are confident. We are working in a number of ways, which I am happy to set out for the noble Lord in writing.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief. First, we are probably facing a renaissance in further education and vocational education, and maybe the starting point is this Bill.

Secondly, I want to thank the Minister—if I could catch her eye—and her predecessor for the thorough and courteous way in which they have handled this Bill. It has been an exemplar of how to take a Bill through this House. Listening is always so important.

At the end of the day, two things matter. One is that the funding is there; the other is that we need to see a cultural change in how society views further and vocational education because if that does not happen, then all our hard work will be for nothing.

I end by thanking my own colleagues, who do not happen to be here, for the support they have given me—particularly when I was away in the Bahamas during Report, but I will keep that quiet. I also thank the Minister’s staff again for the thorough way they have dealt with any requests for information. I hope that the amended Bill—it has been amended by two former Secretaries of State, by Labour and by my Lib Dem Benches—will be agreed by the Commons.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, it has been a great pleasure for me to participate from the Cross Benches in these debates, along with so many much more distinguished experts and a wisdom of former Education Ministers, if that is the correct collective term. This is a very important Bill and I very much echo what the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Storey, have said. I hope that the Government will listen to the issues raised in our debates and think about them carefully as the Bill progresses. I add my thanks to the Minister, to her predecessor and to the Bill team, not least to the current Minister for going beyond her normal duties to help me with my maths abilities, which clearly need some improvement. I very much hope that this will be the Bill that delivers the skills and post-16 education system we need, unlike so many of its unfortunate predecessors.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I have prepared a few words that I intended to say on the Motion that the Bill Do Now Pass. I thought that the Minister would have moved that but we seem to have got there anyway, by whatever route. I am sure noble Lords will not be too unhappy about that, although perhaps the clerk may be.

As noble Lords have demonstrated over four days in Committee and two on Report, the Bill as drafted was not fit for purpose and required considerable improvement. In addition the Minister herself has introduced three concessions, not the least of which concerns net-zero emissions targets, which of course we welcome. Noble Lords have supported eight amendments; what was most remarkable was the extent to which they were the product of effective cross-party planning and execution. Of course, as noble Lords know, no win in your Lordships’ House can be achieved without some cross-party co-operation. But we believe that the number of noble Lords from the government Benches who made clear their dissatisfaction with various parts of the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has just suggested, ought to give the Minister and her Government pause for thought.

With three of their defeats involving amendments in the names of former Conservative Secretaries of State for Education, the Government need to accept that with regard to the Bill they do not possess a monopoly of wisdom on matters as diverse as universal credit conditionality and the withdrawal of BTECs. My noble friend Lady Sherlock has a unique ability: she can explain universal credit in an understandable manner. I have never found anyone else who can achieve that feat.

It would be unkind to press the Minister any further on the mystical missing amendments on the lifelong loan entitlement, because I suspect that in her private moments, she asks herself the same questions as noble Lords: do they really exist? Will they ever appear? We have been promised them so often that on these Benches the suspense is now killing us. We also await details of sharia student finance for both higher education and further education to be announced as part of the spending review, as well as an announcement on fees, which the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, the then Minister, promised in Committee.

However, I would like to record my admiration for the Minister’s ability to pick up the baton on the Bill after it was, I think I can say, thrust at her midway through its consideration in your Lordships’ House. I should say that the change of Minister caught us on these Benches by surprise, because we thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, had coped admirably up until then—although it would appear that was not the view shared by the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip. On my behalf and that of my noble friends Lady Sherlock and Lady Wilcox, I say for the record that we want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for her work on the Bill and for her openness and willingness to engage with us. I also say on our joint behalf that that is not to suggest that the Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran—is any less so in that regard.

I also add my thanks to the Bill team for the briefings it facilitated and its willingness to discuss with us, openly and in detail, aspects of the Bill that were unclear or about which we had concerns. It certainly helped to put us more in tune with the thinking on the Bill, even if we were not always convinced by the arguments.

I thank all noble Lords who have been involved with the Bill at various stages. Of course, the Public Bill Office has, as ever, been extremely helpful. All Ministers, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran, Lady Berridge, Lady Chisholm and Lady Penn, have been most helpful and always pleasant to deal with. Given that my team has also contained two noble Baronesses and a female legislative and political adviser, I have clearly been the token male in all this.

I thank my colleagues, my noble friends Lady Sherlock and Lady Wilcox, for their support and advice, particularly last week, when the change of date for the second day of Report made it impossible for me to participate. They achieved five wins out of five on that occasion, which perhaps suggests that I should have absented myself more often.

As noble Lords are aware, Ministers have a vast array of officials behind them at times like this, and rightly so, but, as the Opposition, we have just one person: Rhian Copple, the legislative and political adviser for our team. She has been an endless source of ideas and support in so many ways, not least in drafting amendments and negotiating with the Public Bill Office, representatives of other parties and Cross-Benchers. We all owe her a huge debt of gratitude.

I wish the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill good luck in another place. It will need it.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I think there has been a regrouping; I was about to speak on an amendment that seems to have disappeared from here. I have added my name to Amendment 45A from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which is still in this group, and of course I entirely endorse what my noble friend Lord Storey said about the importance of the skills wallet.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, is on lifelong learning. Of course, we would much rather see the support for this as grants, rather than loans, to attract adults with financial obligations that deter them from accruing more long-term debt—particularly if it is to encourage their own learning. The amendment is designed to monitor how well the lifelong learning arrangements are working. We particularly wish to see how restricting funding for those studying for an equal or lower-level qualification than one they already hold is impacting the nation’s skills level.

Changes in the world of work mean that many people who already have a level 3 qualification, if they are made unemployed and need to retrain, will need to be able to study for a subsequent qualification at this level or below. The lifetime skills guarantee extended the entitlement beyond those aged under 25 to all adults, but only to a limited list of level 3 qualifications and only for those who do not already have one. It is vital that adults are able to reskill at a lower level in a skill area different from the one already mastered, if that will enable them to gain employment.

This really important amendment calls for the Secretary of State

“to publish an annual report on the impact on re-skilling of funding restrictions on those who wish to pursue a qualification at a level equivalent to or lower than one they already hold.”

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have also added my name to Amendment 45A from the noble Lord, Lord Watson. During the first day of Report, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, spoke about previous unsuccessful skills improvement initiatives and asked,

“why will it be different this time?”—[Official Report, 12/10/21; col. 1765.]

Why will the Government’s new skills system, as embodied in the Bill, work better than its predecessors? In my view, one of the answers will need to be a really vigorous and well thought-through approach to reporting, monitoring and evaluating the different elements of the strategy and how they all work together. The lifelong learning entitlement and the lifetime skills guarantee—I think I have those the right way around—are essential elements of the strategy but need to be transformed from slogans into realities. A crucial part of achieving that will be review, review, review.

I might prefer this amendment if proposed new subsection (1) ended slightly differently, to read, “a report on the impact on the overall levels of skills in England and Wales of all the provisions of this Act”, rather than confining itself to

“the rules regarding eligibility for funding for those undertaking further or higher education courses.”

In the meantime, I will content myself with supporting the noble Lord’s amendment as it stands—with its effect of ensuring that the impact of the equivalent or lower qualification rule is at least reviewed and assessed on a regular annual basis—while encouraging the Minister to look at beefing up further the process of reviewing the overall progress of the skills strategy, beyond the performance monitoring and review of designated employer representative bodies described in her letter to us.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I slightly unexpectedly find myself to be the first person to speak to Amendment 40 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, also signed by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and me. Amendment 45A calls for a review to look at the issues around a restriction on allowing people to study at a level below that which they already possess. Amendment 40 goes further in removing restrictions.

I would have thought that naturally the Conservative position would be a belief that the person best placed to decide their best course of study would be the individual concerned rather than the state. This is a question of individual choice, about people knowing best their own situation. Therefore, while I very much support Amendment 45A, which at least calls for a review, I would go back to the more fundamental change in Amendment 40.

I am also in favour of Amendment 36 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Education is a public good. We hear a lot of talk about investment for levelling up. Well, investment in people is the most fundamental investment of all. It is flexible, it enables people to make choices for themselves. A new or improved railway line or better school facilities are there and accessible to people, but people making their own choices is what investment in education is all about.

I am also in favour of Amendment 48, not yet addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I will leave her to fully explain this, but it is worth stressing that what does not get measured and focused on does not get funded or supported. That is the principle behind that amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 62 from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I seem to have added my speech to his as well, because I very much echo what he said. I was involved in delivering a rather similar previous scheme, the Future Jobs Fund, to young unemployed Londoners. Based on that, I entirely agree with the noble Lord that Kickstart has the potential to become a really valuable programme. I emphasise the word “potential” because I do not think it has got there yet, but it offers substantial benefits to the young participants it focuses on and to the employers who take them on.

For the participants—most, if not all, of whom are at risk of long-term unemployment—six months is long enough for them to become acclimatised to working life and to develop the employability skills they need for their Kickstart placement and for future jobs. The employers can fill short-term vacancies at a low cost, which might even lead to some Kickstarters being taken into permanent roles at the end of the placement, having proved their capability and worth.

Importantly, the scheme also recognises the need for many Kickstarters to receive extra support and training when they start by providing £1,500 for so-called wrap- around support, which is much needed for those who not only are new to the world of work but might often come from chaotic living circumstances. We used to have to send taxis to pick up some of ours to take them to their work, until they realised that they had to be up and dressed at a certain time in order to be there.

However, despite its excellent intentions, the scheme seems to be falling short of expectations, with only about two-fifths of available Kickstart jobs having been taken up by September, including in sectors heavily hit by the pandemic and now much in need of extra staff, such as hospitality, travel, retail and care. Many of the reasons for this disappointing performance, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, sound rather familiar to me, including delays, bureaucracy and complexity. It can take several weeks for a business, and indeed the specific jobs within that business, to be approved for Kickstart; only then does the rather unreliable process of identifying and recruiting candidates start. These must be referred by jobcentre work coaches, and it might take considerable time for them to come up with enough suitable candidates for employers to interview and recruit.

Again echoing the noble Lord, small businesses in particular, many of which could and do offer highly worthwhile Kickstart places, are often put off by the time, effort and bureaucracy involved. They are no longer required to use gateway providers to get involved in the scheme, but many of them continue to do so to reduce the burden on themselves of the complex administration involved.

It also seems that Kickstart is not as well integrated with other skills programmes, such as the apprenticeships programme, as it could be. Ideally, every successfully completed Kickstart placement should lead to clear pathways to further development whenever possible, including one or more apprenticeship options.

It would indeed be a pity if, just as some of these issues with Kickstart are beginning to be ironed out, and with numbers and outcomes picking up momentum, the scheme came to an end on 31 December—what I thought was its current cut-off date of, but it sounds as if that has possibly been extended. The noble Lord’s amendment would require the Secretary of State to review the scheme’s operation and consider whether its lifetime should be extended, with or without further modifications; for example, relating to eligibility and the link to universal credit. Surely such a review should be seen as an absolute necessity to learn the lessons of the scheme so far and consider whether or how it could be built on or improved.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with great pleasure to offer my support to Amendment 45 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, to which I have attached my name. It is, in a way, the reverse of Amendment 63: Amendment 45 says that adult learners should be able to get universal credit; Amendment 63 says that you should be able to become an adult learner while on universal credit. I am not sure which is the best way round, but I am not sure that it matters or will make much practical difference. Both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, have clearly outlined the Kafkaesque complications that arise, and the unreasonable unintended traps people can find themselves in when they seek to study and find that the system simply does not allow them to.

I want to come from the other point of view very briefly and think about the overall good of the country. As I was contemplating these amendments, I thought back to hearing an economist talk about how, slightly counterintuitively, having a very short period between people becoming unemployed and finding a new job might not be the best thing, because if you have very low levels of unemployment benefits, as we do in the UK compared to many continental countries, people have to grab the first job they can secure—the first job that comes along. That means that you get an awful lot of square pegs in round holes. You get people who are not best for the job. They are not good for the employer and it is not good for them to be in a job for which they are not suited. If you have a longer period, people are able to assess and improve their skills and then find the right job, stay in that job for longer, advance in it and make real progress. We need to move towards a system that allows that to happen. When we talk about the economy, we talk about how we can solve our productivity problem. These are the base issues that we need to think about. Amendments 45 and 63 address them.

On Amendment 62, I want to offer the Green group’s support. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said nearly everything I was going to say, so I am not going repeat it. It was reminiscent of some of the reports you hear of the green homes grant and employers struggling to get paid. If we are talking about small employers, their cash flow can become a serious problem.

I note one figure that says that the north-east—the region with the highest unemployment in England—is the area with the lowest rate of take up of Kickstart. That is obviously a concern, and it should be looked at in a review, particularly in the light of the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

That figure of 5,000 new apprenticeships a year created by the Civil Service is utterly pitiful. It should be many multiples of that. The idea that only one in eight new recruits to the Civil Service is an apprentice of any age, let alone a young apprentice, is a really serious condemnation of the state and the state’s leadership in the creation of apprenticeships. If the state does not lead on this business, there is no reason whatever to expect that the rest of the country will follow.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, described as the first half of Amendment 50, but I am rather less comfortable about the approach taken in the second half, requiring any employer receiving apprenticeship funding to spend at least two-thirds of it on people under 25 beginning apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3. That is an aim I entirely support, but I am not convinced that putting the onus wholly on employers to deliver it is the right way of going about it.

One of the concerns employers have regularly expressed about the current apprenticeship system is its lack of flexibility. This amendment would not only reduce the flexibility available to employers but impose extra requirements on them to manage their apprenticeship programmes and an extra level of bureaucracy resulting from the process of enforcing the requirements.

Employers already find it difficult to spend their levy funds, which is why so many apprenticeships go to reskilling and upskilling existing employees. The energy and utilities sector, which has a very good record of employing apprentices, has managed to spend on average only 54% of the levy funding available to it, so it is not as if there is not more money available. All that they do not spend just goes back to the Treasury.

I believe a better approach might be to introduce that extra flexibility into the apprenticeship levy system itself, to make it easier and more attractive for employers to offer more apprenticeships at these levels to younger people. This could be done through, for example, enabling part of an employer’s levy funds to be used for pre-apprenticeship training initiatives in schools to identify and prepare young people who might then be suitable candidates for apprenticeships. I am sure there are other ways of motivating employers to offer more apprenticeships of this type, rather than introducing additional rules that could lead to their providing fewer.

I support two and a half thirds of this amendment, but I am slightly uncertain about the mechanism that the noble Lords are implying to address the third one.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I have not participated in any of the proceedings on this Bill, partly because I chair the Economic Affairs Committee and we are looking at central bank digital currencies at the moment. But I bumped into the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who pointed out to me that this amendment is entirely in line with the recommendations made by the committee in its report, Treating Students Fairly, which was published in June three years ago. I shall not repeat the arguments so eloquently put by my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, with every word of which I agree, but it was set out clearly in that report, more than three years ago, that the apprenticeship levy was not working. Indeed, we found that larger employers who were running very effective apprenticeship schemes had simply abandoned it, treating the levy as a tax, and done their own thing.

My noble and learned friend spoke about the way in which all the financial incentives are to keep people in schools and send them on to universities, where they do courses which do not enable many of them to use the skills and achieve the kind of living standards which they aspire to. In short, we probably need more plumbers, electricians, specialists and engineers than we do people who are experts in media studies. I am not saying that media studies is not a serious subject—well, actually, I do think that it is not a serious subject, but that is probably going to get me a lot of abusive emails. I am disappointed that, as this matter was discussed in Committee and as there has been so much about it in the all-party unanimous report, the Government are still dragging their feet on the matter.

When we discuss future topics in our committee, one thing that is regularly suggested is that we look at productivity. We always reject it, on the grounds that it is such a broad subject and so difficult, but this matter is absolutely central to productivity and, even more importantly, offers a future to so many of our young people. So I hope that my noble friend will consider this amendment. I take the point about providing flexibility.

One thing that struck me—and I know that the Government have taken some action on this—was that one of the officials who gave evidence to us proudly announced that the apprenticeship scheme had been used to send her to business school. Of course, that is the antithesis of what the scheme should be. I am not up to date on what has happened since, but there were some 400 different types of rules for different organisations, and the whole thing had become utterly bureaucratic.

The noble Lord, Lord Layard, referred to the Robbins committee. Those of your Lordships who have not read the report should just read the introduction; it is written in the most beautiful prose. It sets out the objectives, from all those years ago, and this amendment is central to achieving them.

When we were looking at treating students fairly, one thing we got in evidence was a diagram showing all the initiatives that had been taken by various Governments for training, and all the changes in names and so on. It is an unbelievably complicated process—not just YTS; there are literally tens and tens of different initiatives. What we need, in the words of Her Majesty the Queen, is perhaps less talk and more doing in this area. This amendment is a very important step forward if the Government decide to accept it.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we have come a long way from the days when someone considering their further education or career development would be told, “There’s a cupboard. Go and choose your prospectus”. We now have a situation where there is an academic curriculum for the academic students and the other 50% of students are pushed or cajoled into a sixth form which is clearly not suitable for them. We know why: money counts. To answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, we live in a sort of educational free-market economy where schools compete with one another. When the A-level results come out, all the banners go outside the various secondary schools trying to entice pupils to switch to their sixth forms. But I am not interested at the moment in the academic students; I am interested in those other students for whom a further educational or vocational pathway would be far better.

I want to ask the Minister quite directly why we should not support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. It eminently makes sense; why are the Government not supporting it? I have not heard any reason given.

It is shameful that schools behave in this way. You would think that a school would want the best for its pupils. If a young girl or boy is suited to a vocational career, the school should do all in its power to make that happen, but we do not see that happening, which reflects badly on those schools. I have to say, though, that there are many secondary schools that do the opposite and—even before the clause of the noble Lord, Lord Baker—have fairs where different colleges and career representatives come along to show what is on offer. We should not need this clause; it is shameful that we do, but we do. I would be interested to know from the Minister what sanctions we placed on those schools that have not operated the current Baker clause. Is Ofsted, for example, reporting in its inspections when a school has not co-operated with or involved other FE colleges, providers or careers opportunities?

Finally, the Minister quite rightly talks about the Gatsby benchmarks but, again, not all schools have achieved the right level that they should; it is an ongoing process. We very much support this amendment and will do so if it goes to a vote.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I will not speak at any length about these two similar amendments, because I agree wholeheartedly with what all three speakers so far have said. Both represent an improvement on the current situation but, as we have heard, Amendment 35A from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has stronger teeth and would provide for more frequent access—three times during each of the three specified phases, rather than just once. That is much more in line with the requirements of the Gatsby career benchmarks. It would require meetings with a representative range of educational and training providers, including UTCs, rather than just one provider, and it would not rely on any as yet unspecified statutory guidance. For all those reasons, it makes it much more likely that the requirement for pupils to receive these opportunities really takes place. I will certainly support the noble Lord if he puts his Amendment 35A to a vote.

The Minister’s helpful letter to us on Tuesday included a positive section on careers information and guidance, although I continue to regret the absence of a renewed careers strategy to provide an overall context and objectives for the various laudable actions that she set out. She mentions the support given by the Careers & Enterprise Company’s personal guidance fund for activities, including training for careers professionals, and the development of a pipeline of qualified careers professionals for the future. I wonder if she has made any assessment of the numbers of such professionals needing to be trained, what level of qualification they need to be trained to, and whether the funding and other incentives on offer are sufficient to meet those needs—in other words, a sort of workforce development plan for careers professionals. That is one reason why I think it would be helpful to have a strategy that sets out all the elements that are needed to deliver the kind of careers support that we need.

I end by echoing the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey: these amendments are important, and it is equally important that we make sure they are in some way enforced and the requirements are met.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, we had a fair old ding- dong last time we met on this Bill, with the Government proposing that we should destroy an entire suite of examinations in order to improve access to T-levels. Yet here they are refusing to make minor changes to the sight that children are given of T-levels—which have many other benefits—as an option.

I do not see how the Government are being consistent on this. If they want T-levels to be fully appreciated as an option by young people, they need them to be put in front of those young people, clearly and frequently. That is what my noble friend Lord Baker’s amendment would do, and the Government’s amendment would not. I am thoroughly with those noble Lords who have spoken in saying that my noble friend’s amendment is a better way forward than the Government are yet proposing.

I also encourage the Government to look at a couple of old chestnuts to do with performance tables. If you want head teachers to say to children that they will be better off in an FE college and encourage them to go to it, you ought to give them credit for the results that they achieve there. It ought to be something that appears in the performance tables, credited to the school that has made that decision; otherwise, the incentive is just to hang on to pupils for the money. If schools are risking a blip in the performance tables because the A-level results will be bad and it would have been much better if they had gone to a technical college, there will be a real incentive for schools to encourage children to take that option.

The other aspect is to provide much better data on where children end up after school. At the moment, the information provided on what happens to those who do not go to university is very thin, uninspiring and not the sort of thing that encourages a parent to say, “Oh, that looks interesting; why don’t we look at that?” The provision of data and information is really important in helping parents to help their children make decisions, and the Government are falling a long way short on that. They have the information; it is just a question of deciding that they will publish it or make it available to others who will publish it. I really encourage them to go down that road.

My noble friend the Minister said that she hoped children would be making fully informed choices. I totally agree with her. If we can bring universities up to that standard, I should be delighted as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her incredibly kind comments earlier about how quickly I have picked up this brief. I cannot confidently respond further than I did in my response to the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Schools take Ofsted inspections extremely seriously, so I hope the fact that the inspection framework and handbook have changed to accommodate this will give my noble friend some reassurance. I will also write to her and put a copy of the letter in the Library.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, can I ask her for a point of clarification? She mentioned that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, required nine meetings. My understanding is that it is

“on at least three occasions during each of the first, second and third key phase”.

I may be misunderstanding this, but I understand a key phase to be a two-year period, so it would be six rather than nine.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think trying to do mental arithmetic at the Dispatch Box is risky, but, as I read it, it is three times three because of the first, second and third key phases. Maybe we both need to go to numeracy boot camp, but I think three threes are nine —or at least they were when I was at school, which admittedly was a very long time ago. I believe the correct figure is nine, because the amendment specifies the first, second and third phase of education and three encounters in each phase.

I therefore hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.