Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Aberdare and Lord Lucas

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Aberdare and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I am a believer in the value of the Kickstart scheme and would like to see it extended in the manner suggested by Amendment 87, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Storey—Lord Storey-cum-Addington—and Lord Shipley, following a review of its operation and experience to date.

My own former employability training business was involved some years ago in the delivery of the Labour Government’s Future Jobs Fund, which, like Kickstart, enabled employers to take on young people for six months, with their salary paid by the Government. Many of the young people involved had never worked before and faced significant challenges in entering the job market, including lack of work-readiness and employability skills, poor educational attainment, lack of funds for travel or even suitable clothing, chaotic lifestyles, lack of aspiration, substance abuse, and records of offending and imprisonment. A period of six months’ employment, with employers willing to make initial allowances for their circumstances and much personal support from the organisations delivering the programme—including Barnardo’s and Nacro, by which we were contracted—was enough for many of them to acquire the skills and behaviours needed to become reliable and useful employees, often with those same employers they had been with for six months. This is not a low-cost approach and not for everyone, but I believe it is an effective way of enabling many young people in these specific circumstances to make a successful transition into work.

Kickstart has got off to a rather bumpy start, as we have heard from other noble Lords, with delays and difficulties both in employers being accepted on to the programme—initially through the gateway process, which has fortunately been removed, but there are still quite a few hurdles to get over—and, more particularly, in recruiting candidates through the rules of the Jobcentre Plus scheme. But I believe it offers the right approach for the young people in the target group I have described. I hope the Minister can tell us what plans the Government have to review the scheme so far and to consider whether, and in what form, it might be further extended to perhaps meet the specific needs of the most challenging young people within the overall skills system created by the Bill.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too am a fan of Kickstart, and I hope that the Government will consolidate and build on it. A review, as proposed in this amendment, seems a timely suggestion. I support a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said, and I would add only two emphases. First, there are certainly some occasions when a Kickstart six-month placement ought to be combined with a course of training. For instance, if we employed Kickstarters to do environmental work, it would not do them much good if they had not achieved their chainsaw certification and other necessary qualifications to enable them to continue in the industry. Sometimes the Kickstart placement ought to be bundled in with training, and that ought to be made easy.

Secondly, £1,500 for looking after a Kickstarter is really not much. You have to have spare employee time substantially beyond that value to make good use of a Kickstarter and to give them a really good experience. I hope the Government will review people’s experience on that front and consider what it would take to really recompense employers—particularly small employers, who often do not have a lot of spare capacity—for the effort they are making, day to day, looking after a Kickstarter.