Apprenticeships

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, my involvement with apprenticeships started with the noble Lord, Lord Young, a good few years ago when the Bill went through. At that time it was pointed out to me that everybody had to pass an English and maths test, and the language was, “Give the employers what they want. They want good English and maths”. I stood up and said, “What about dyslexics?”. Noble Lords said, “Of course, we do not want to remove anybody from employment here”, and I went away. I made a huge mistake that day because initially the Act stated that everybody needed English and maths, and that was seen to be the priority. It was decided that this overrode the Equality Act—wrongly and illegally—and we got ourselves into a horrible mess, which was resolved only three and a half years later during the course of a Bill. I just point out that anything, no matter how well intentioned, can go wrong, and apprenticeships are right there with everything else. Nobody intended it to happen, but then officials decided, “This is what we had said and we defended it”. Most politicians saw the mistake and said, “That cannot be right”, and then we had to fight our way—more or less machete our way—through the levels of resistance. I take a big slice of the blame pie for not coming back to the noble Lord, Lord Young, at a later stage in that Bill to demand an explanation of what should happen, but I could not quite believe that anybody would do anything that dumb. My naivety, after nearly three decades here, still surprises me.

Where are we now? We have the apprenticeship system, which takes over most of the further education training in this country. Everything is being drawn towards the apprenticeship system. Yet how are hidden disabilities and disabilities generally being dealt with in this system? People with dyslexia are the biggest group; I do not think anyone has argued about that. It is reckoned to be about 10% to 20% in certain parts of the state, but we use 10%. We still have a problem in that we have only just got the examination system to take on board that reasonable adjustments should be made to the online test to use technology that is well established in higher education. We have only just got that in. There are increasingly worrying signs that the trainers and providers within the colleges do not know what they are doing with the dyslexic in the classroom. Therefore, neither do colleges and their support work. Can my noble friend give me some idea of how this has developed over time and what pressure will be exerted to make sure that colleges, employers and trainers all understand this vast array of difficulties that they will encounter?

Why is it important here? It is because dyslexics should be overrepresented in something that uses practical skills. At the moment, in higher education you are fine; we have a very well established system there with the DSA. I declare an interest in that from one of my outside activities. However, in the further education sector we do not have that culture. It is there to an extent in schools but it is still hit and miss. If you are to get into that tough-to-reach 20%—the 20% who were not getting five GCSEs—you must be prepared to deal with these groups. You must have a very well established SEN structure that knows how to deal with young adults. If we are talking particularly about the young, we are talking about somebody who has already failed within the classroom and for whom this is a bad experience and a bad place to be. If you do more of the same, you will fail again.

What are we going to do about this? We have to try to get in here. I never wanted to become the person who has to stand up and make the same speech, or a variation on the same speech, every time we talk about apprenticeships. I am sure I could bore your Lordships’ House on other subjects with equal vigour. But we need a structure here that goes on. We have established for colleges, trainers and employers an incentive to go on, because they can get them, finally, through the exam. I deliberately concentrate on that because that was the model we went through in schools for getting through O-levels when they started and now for GCSEs, A-levels and degrees. If you have a reason to get the person through and they can pass, or stand a realistic chance of passing, suddenly everybody can buy in. That process will be quicker and easier if we insist on having decent training in that process.

We are starting on a process. The entrance-level qualifications are probably very important to this group I am talking about, so I think that level 2 has a place for getting people at least involved in their training. However, unless you can ensure that the experience of receiving training is there, you will not maximise it and get the people involved. I look forward to hearing what progress will be made, because we cannot ignore this, and dyslexics are only one group within a very large group.