Lifelong Learning

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank my noble friend Lady Garden for raising this topic. Perhaps I should blame her as well, because this topic should probably be raised about once a week: it is that big and important. This debate has covered various facets of it, from the possible decline of the Open University—one of the most revolutionary universities of the late 20th century—to the reworking of the old idea of apprenticeships, and dozens of other points. It is a massive subject and we are merely writing a small chapter of it. That being said, can we accuse the Government of doing nothing? Not according to the briefing that I got from the Local Government Association. Lifelong learning is being run by eight different departments or Whitehall agencies—20 different schemes, all with different eligibility criteria. How many people actually knew that before the information was collated? We knew it was complicated and difficult and we knew it was going on.

I do not know whether the apprenticeship levy is included in that. If ever there was a good idea that seems to have irritated everyone who has had anything to do with it, it wins the prize. Nearly £1.3 billion has not been allocated and is sitting there, possibly going back to the Treasury. That is quite an achievement, when we claim to have a need for more training. The Local Government Association briefing recommends some form of local hub to deal with this. My noble friend Lady Janke would agree, I think. If that is not the model for getting a slightly better handle on training needs, what else is? Surely that is part of what we are talking about. If we are talking about learning and a whole education, as opposed to one that is simply preparation for employment, it cannot be the whole of it but it is certainly a part. Unless we make this a slightly simpler and more straightforward process, we will guarantee one thing: that those who need the training most of all will miss it.

Noble Lords will seldom get me coming to my feet to talk about a subject that relates to education when I do not touch upon dyslexia and especially the other hidden disabilities. They are a complicated series of structures. That group do not handle paperwork that well, be it on a screen or on paper, and they will find access difficult. Unless you get some unifying guidance, better career prospects or someone to guide you through, that group will miss out, regardless of how well they did at school and when they were identified. I heard a great deal about this when I was at the international conference of the British Dyslexia Association at the weekend in sunny Telford—although most of the day I was inside; I am told that one of the days it was sunny. We heard a lot about that and about how my brain—and that of the noble Lord, Lord Bird—differs from those of most of the rest. Apparently, we use the front lobes of our brain more than others do. I then received a rude comment that night, to the effect that maybe as an old rugby player I do not use them quite so well because that is the bit that gets hit first. On into the night it went. If you have groups that have problems which do not fit the mould, that will be more difficult to identify. At that same conference we heard from Ambitious about Autism. There the issue is a related but different set of problems: the interrelation of the person and the skill.

In addition, surely for lifelong learning we should encourage such people to take on their own initiatives. I shall give noble Lords another anecdote: somebody who last cut my hair turned out to be dyslexic. I said, “Do you use any of the amazing technology out there?”. He answered, “I don’t have to—my wife does it for me”. A person who is on your side is still the best bit of support you can get. However, as the British Dyslexia Association’s helpline proves—I was told this anecdotally—when that person does something inconvenient like dying or leaving you, you are in trouble. When you cannot fill out your timesheets, your application forms or your insurance details, you are in trouble. What are we doing to make sure that these groups that need the help can access it easily and well?

I could go on about the problems we have had with people who provide apprenticeships for this group saying that you need an education and healthcare plan to get this—that is the descendant of the old statement—when that qualification is designed for only a small fraction of those in that disability group, which means that you effectively exclude from the qualification those who would most benefit from it and most easily function in society with it. A degree of coherence is required here, which goes across the field and which allows these people in. This is probably a good example of a chaotic system, which does not think ahead or holistically. Unless we can start to address this, we will come back again and again, fighting many rearguard or small-scale actions to try to correct this. I hope that the Government can give us at least a hint that they take this seriously.