Apprenticeships

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, mention of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, makes me feel particularly ashamed of what I am about to say. When I saw the subject of this debate, I thought that I knew what I was looking at, but when I started looking at craft apprenticeships, I discovered that really I did not. It is a very complicated field with a variety of ways in. The apprentice or trainee is often much older; different and confusing levels of funding are available; and we do not really know how to advise people. I came to this debate with one idea—how to give advice to people on how to get into this field, but it is clear that we have a problem there. It is difficult to explain a way in, particularly as, as has been pointed out, craft apprentices tend to be older entrants.

We should give better careers guidance to people, but it is clear that careers guidance is particularly bad for those who are not coming out of schools or colleges. I think it is something that we all do. We say, “What I have done is what everybody else should do”, regardless of whether that is what we need. In academic institutions with a graduate-based teaching foundation, there tends to be a prejudice, with people saying that that is the way that others should go. All of us who have followed that route have that prejudice. We have to fight hard against that, and I do not think that anybody would disagree. I know many people who are involved in trades and crafts who say, “Wouldn’t it have been nice to go to university?”. It is particularly odd at the moment because I feel that crafts, trade, building and working with your hands is so popular. It is difficult to switch on our television sets without hearing the praises of good craftsmen in numerous property programmes—or is it just me who finds those programmes when I am trying to switch on the monitor early in the morning in your Lordships’ House, or indeed, in the evening?

Possibly we are missing the trick. We are not saying that it is rewarding—often financially rewarding as well as spiritually rewarding. If legislation is in place that we shall have listed buildings, there is almost a guaranteed market created for some of the work needed and the fact that we will provide funding for such work. There are jobs, careers and ways forward. As has already been stated, these are careers that are valuable in modern building. They augment and support. When it comes to the finer skills, possibly a few will die out in terms of certain types of trade and certain ways of doing the work. Knowledge of those will at least be valuable for museums. Surely there is an ongoing market, but finding your way through is incredibly difficult. Simplification is needed.

I may be the bearer of a comparatively small brain when it comes to dealing with facts, figures and interlocking things. I was totally lost half way through. I knew that it could be done somehow if you were lucky and the wind was with you, and that you smiled on, but after that I would give no advice whatever. I would not know where to go to get advice. I would not know whether it was a one-stop shop to get even the first comments on this. We must look at the way we have encouraged people to go into craft trades, working with their hands, and how we communicate the value of such work. It is quite clear that this answers many economic questions and issues of value both to ourselves and to society. It will be rewarding to the person and society as a whole.

Making this path clearer and more straightforward is a very important facet of how to get the best out of it. I promised myself that I would not talk exclusively about dyslexia and apprenticeships, but will my noble friend comment on how the new access arrangements are going? It is another cliché that dyslexics tended to find themselves in niches where they did not have to do too much writing. In the past they tended to work with their hands. Telling people how to get through to that point would be extremely helpful. With modern technology, the problems with dyslexia are not what they were if you get the right stuff in front of you and are trained how to use it.

My comments about the disabled students’ allowance should probably wait for next week. We shall, however, ask what the Government are doing to make it easier for those who have problems with literacy, due to dyslexia, to access something that they can do, given that they want a qualification. That is a reasonable question. The real point I am making is how we can disseminate the information and educate the population that these career options and paths are available to them, and how this group can be kept informed.

I could reiterate these points but I do not think that anything would be achieved by that. As for the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, making five speeches in one day, I am still betting that he will be more coherent on his fifth one than I have been on my first.