Education and Social Mobility

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

In my contribution, I hope to explain exactly why we need to move away from selection and towards inclusion in our education system.

The conclusions of the Social Mobility Commission will find much support in this House, not just among Opposition Members but, I hope, among Government Members as well. We still have not heard from the Prime Minister whether any of the recommendations will be adopted.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Before we have to listen to the sixth-form debating points from Conservative Members, does my hon. Friend agree that what they ought to do is to set out the evidence for this policy? They should tell us where these schools will be, how many of them there will be, how much the policy will cost, how these schools will select their pupils, where the resources will come from, what the pupils will learn and how the schools will differ from existing ones.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There are clearly many questions to be answered about the evidence for such a policy.

I want to give the Education Secretary the chance to end this uncertainty in our school system. Can she tell us which of the commission’s recommendations she will be accepting, and whether the Government have rejected the recommendation on schools, in particular? The challenges that we face as a country go much further than this one misguided policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

I do not think that we will get a better team by training them less, and no longer giving them any kind of elite education. I think that Opposition Members are being very obtuse.

Let me try a different argument. The Opposition’s second argument against grammar schools is that in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, where we have some good grammar schools, all the other schools must be suffering. Opposition Members write off and write down the many excellent comprehensive schools in areas that have access to grammar school places, in a quite unrealistic and unpleasant way.

I know my own area better than Buckinghamshire. We do not have any grammar schools in my constituency, but there are two excellent grammar schools just over the border in Reading, a girls’ school and a boys’ school, which take some of our brightest and academically most gifted pupils from the Wokingham area. Our comprehensive schools in Wokingham also contain great, academically gifted children. Those children, at the top of those schools, do not have to compete with the children at the grammar, and they go on to compete very successfully and get good places at elite universities. Opposition Members should not write off those schools, or pretend that they are some kind of failed secondary modern.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) reminded us that there are some very good secondary modern schools whose pupils achieve great things. My hon. Friend himself achieved great things before coming to the House, and some will consider it a great achievement that he is in the House now. I think that that shows that no one should write off any whole category of school. As an Opposition Member pointed out in a more honest moment, what really matters in a school is the talent of the teaching force and the good will and working spirit of the pupils. The two play off each other. That can be found in a good comprehensive, and it can be found in a good grammar school.

The Opposition must understand that we are not trying to create a series of schools for failures. We want to have great schools for everyone. We believe that selecting some pupils on the basis of academic ability and giving them elite academic training can make sense for them, but it does not write off the other schools.

[Ian Austin]

I am not at all opposed to giving the brightest pupils an elite education. That is not why I am worried about grammar schools. I am worried about grammar schools because they do not solve the central problems that our education system faces. Michael Wilshaw has said that we have “a mediocre education system”. When it comes to the vast majority of pupils, we are falling behind out international competitors. In a modern economy in which the innovation sector is creating jobs at 30 times the rate of the rest of the economy, we need to exploit the talents of all our young people. That is why I am worried about grammar schools.

[John Redwood]

I opened my speech with exactly that comment. I think that that is common ground. However, selecting some people who are good at football or good at academic subjects does not prevent us from providing a good education for everyone else. If we want to have more Nobel prize winners in the future, we should bear in mind that they are likely to be attending the great universities in our country. Do we not want to feed those great universities with the best possible talent from our schooling system, and should not those talented people have been given an education that stretches them and takes them further along the road to great work before they reach the universities? The most successful people at university have often had an extremely good education beforehand. They are self-starters, and understand the importance of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

We face two major challenges in education in Britain. First, we are rapidly falling behind other countries for basic numeracy and literacy—not just Finland and South Korea, as has been traditional, but now even Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. That is one reason why Michael Wilshaw recently told the Education Committee that we have a mediocre education system in our country. Secondly, with the innovation economy creating jobs at a much higher rate than the economy as a whole, and with jobs that require no skills or low skills disappearing at a rapid rate, we need to educate all our young people to a high standard.

However, as we have heard, last week’s Social Mobility Commission report shows that compared with children from the most advantaged areas, children from deprived areas are 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school, more likely to drop out of education at 16, and 30% less likely to study A-levels that could get them into a top university. White working-class boys are even worse off. New research by the Sutton Trust shows that three quarters are being so badly let down that they are failing to achieve five good GCSE grades. Let us compare that with the situation for pupils from independent schools: just five public schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than 2,000 state schools—two-thirds of the entire state sector; and despite accounting for just 7% of school pupils, those from independent schools represent seven out of 10 High Court judges, more than half our leading journalists and doctors, and more than a third of MPs.

I want to see the whole country united around the mission of driving up standards and opening up opportunity for all pupils, but grammars can improve social mobility only if poor children are able to go to them. Analysis by the Education Datalab shows that poor children are much less likely to get in than their better-off peers. Poor children have already had a poorer start to their education by the age of 11, making it harder for them to get into grammar schools; but even where two children have the same scores at key stage 2, the poorer child is less likely to pass an entry exam and get into a grammar school. In fact, in areas with selective grammar schools the gap between rich and poor is greater than it is in areas without any grammar schools at all. Grammar schools also put a barrier between these pupils and some of the country’s most experienced teachers: the Education Datalab also shows that 54% of teachers at grammars have been in the profession for more than 10 years, whereas at a secondary modern just 41% have the same experience.

We should be doing the opposite. We should have better schools for every child, and we should expand the gifted and talented programme. Instead of using scarce resources on new grammar schools, we should focus on improving early years education and tackling stubborn levels of under-achievement in areas such as the black country, and areas across the midlands and the north. We should provide incentives and support to train experienced teachers, get them into schools with poorer children and help them stay in the profession. Anyone who visits a school that has been turned around or seen a dramatic improvement in results will know that it is impossible without the inspirational leadership that brilliant heads provide. We need new ways of identifying, recruiting and training a new generation of headteachers.

New grammars will not tackle the fundamental problems that our education system faces. They will not transform the quality of education for all pupils or tackle the social mobility crisis that exists in Britain. The policy will do nothing to tackle the chronic shortage of teachers—the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. It will not help to identify, train and recruit a new generation of brilliant heads, improve early years education, which is the key to giving every child a first-class start, or improve the status and quality of vocational education. It will do nothing about the funding crisis facing post-16 education, and the deepest cuts that the further education sector has ever seen. Those are the issues that the Government should address.

We should all agree that education is our No. 1 priority. Let us sweep aside this old party political dogma. Instead of using time, energy and resources on expensive and time-consuming structural changes for which there is absolutely no evidence, let us have a national debate about education and involve all the parties, employers, and the teaching profession. Based on the evidence, we can then work out how a modern education system should be structured and what young people need to learn for the modern economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Kendall]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. There is nothing economically credible about paying more for problems that could have been prevented. Having a genuinely long-term economic policy means prioritising the early years. We should make it a national mission that every child starts school ready to learn. If the Prime Minister really wants a country that works for everyone, she should scrap the Government’s £1 billion inheritance tax cut for the wealthiest few and put that money into transforming early years services instead.

All the evidence shows that strong leadership and great teachers make the biggest difference in improving attainment in schools, particularly for disadvantaged children. For poor pupils, the difference between having a good teacher and a poor teacher is a whole year’s learning. Those pupils cannot wait and we should not let them. The Government should be focusing relentlessly on getting the best heads and teachers into the most challenging schools. New incentives should also be trialled, such as writing off a proportion of teachers’ student loans for each year that they teach at a particularly challenging school.

[Ian Austin]

Does my hon. Friend agree that expanding Teach First would be a good way of getting more high quality teachers into struggling schools?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

We fully value the contribution that EU staff make to the success of UK institutions. The higher education sector has a long-established tradition of attracting brilliant academics and students at all stages of their careers, and we are working hard to ensure that that continues. The Prime Minister has given assurances that she has every expectation of being able to guarantee the status of such academics, provided that other countries reciprocate for British nationals in their countries.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

The only way we will bring new jobs and industries to areas like the black country that have lost their traditional industries is if we have the skills that new modern and high-tech industries need. Will the Minister guarantee that the £50 million from the EU that is currently spent on skills in institutions such as Wolverhampton University and other organisations in the black country will be maintained after we leave? Will he use the rest of the money that we currently contribute to the EU to get behind brilliant institutions such as Dudley’s new institute of technology and to ensure that we have university campuses in areas like Dudley that do not have them at the moment?

[Joseph Johnson]

As I said in my earlier answer, the relationship we have with the EU will be the subject of a broad discussion, and among the important issues at stake in that will be the future of our access to funding streams that have been of value to institutions such as those the hon. Gentleman mentions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady will know that, since 2010, we have seen considerable growth in every single region of the UK, including in the midlands. With our focus on the midlands engine, we want to see even more. She is right to highlight the importance of devolution. In my Department, for example, the devolution of skills will make a big difference.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

One of the best ways of bringing in new industries and new jobs to replace the ones that we have lost in the west midlands over the past few decades would be to back Dudley’s exciting plans for an institute of technology, building on the brilliant work that is going on at Dudley Advance. Earlier this year, we were delighted to welcome a visit by the Minister for Skills, and I think that he was very impressed with what was going on. Will the Secretary of State meet a delegation from Dudley to hear about these plans and to discuss them with us in detail?

[Sajid Javid]

I am a big fan of Dudley, and I would love to visit it again.

“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Ah—I call my University of Essex contemporary, Mr Ian Austin.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The PISA figures actually show that we are going down the international league tables as standards among our competitors rise much more quickly than here in the UK, so it is an absolute tragedy that the Secretary of State spends so much of her time on partisan bickering and a dogmatic obsession with structures. The best way—the quickest way—to improve standards in our schools is to focus on leadership, and that is what she should be giving all her attention to. Will she take the £1 billion that she was going to spend on forcing every school to become an academy and use it to recruit and train a new generation of brilliant headteachers?

[Nicky Morgan]

May I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read, or re-read if he has already done so, chapter 3 of the White Paper, entitled “Great leaders running our schools and at the heart of our system”? We do not need to divert money because we have already set aside money for training headteachers and supporting their great leadership. If he wants to talk about our rankings in the international league tables, he might like to consider that between 2000 and 2009 England’s 15-year-olds fell from seventh to 25th in reading, eighth to 27th in maths, and fourth to 16th in science. If he thinks that performance when his party was in power was good enough, he should have another think.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I am pleased that we have got to questions from other Members of the House, and the hon. Gentleman rightly says that the principle is of course right. We will be looking in detail at the needs of the disadvantaged pupils. I should point out that we have also introduced the pupil premium—we did so after the funding formula was first introduced—at a cost of more than £2.5 billion a year. We want to make sure that there will be full consultation, and all Members and others will have an opportunity to have their say.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

White working-class boys are three times less likely to go on to university than their counterparts from wealthier families, so should this review not be about closing that gap and addressing the social mobility crisis that exists in our country, instead of being about some sort of crude, one-size-fits-all, national standard, which is what the Members behind the Secretary of State are clearly urging her to introduce?

[Nicky Morgan]

As I have said, there will be a full consultation, but I think that the hon. Gentleman has got the wrong end of the stick. The funding formula to be consulted on will absolutely take into account the needs of disadvantaged pupils. If he wants to talk about working-class boys, let me say that it cannot be right that there are schools in Knowsley that are receiving hundreds of pounds less than schools in Wandsworth, and that is just one such example. We must end that inequity, and this Government have taken the difficult decision to do that.

School Expansion

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend very much indeed. He will know our party gave a clear commitment in our manifesto to fairer funding, and he will also know that we are working on it. I cannot comment on anything ahead of the spending review, but we are all aware of the need to look at this and make the funding fairer, which is why we invested £390 million in this financial year and the last financial year to try to get towards a fairer funding system, but there is further work to do.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I do not share the Secretary of State’s complacency about the quality of education being provided for most children in Britain today. What we are seeing is actually a picture of decades of entrenched mediocrity. The result of that is that we are falling down the international league table; we are now behind not only South Korea and Shanghai but Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The top jobs in too many professions are now the preserve of the tiny number of people who have been to the best private schools and Oxbridge. We are the only country in the world in which educational outcome is determined largely by parental occupation, and the people entering the workforce are now less well qualified than those who are retiring from it. The Secretary of State should be much more ambitious for Britain’s pupils and for our country. If she really wants to tackle the social mobility crisis in this country, she should look at the excellent work of the Sutton Trust and consider introducing the open access scheme to enable children from poor backgrounds in constituencies such as mine to get into 120 private schools in this country.

[Nicky Morgan]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to explore some of those themes in the Select Committee. I would just point out to him that his party was in power for 13 years, during which time there was rampant grade inflation and the assisted places scheme was abolished. In addition, his party failed to introduce the pupil premium. I am delighted to hear that, from the sound of it, he is supporting our education reforms, which will raise standards. We have had five years in government so far, and we are—

[Ian Austin]

indicated dissent.

[Nicky Morgan]

We are seeing standards rising, with 82% of schools now being rated good or outstanding and 1 million more children in places that are good or outstanding, but of course there is further to go. I look forward to having his support on this.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Shayne Hadland. It was a huge achievement to win such a prize at the WorldSkills competition—I know just how competitive it was. Luckily for Britain, we had many other winners and I congratulate them too. It is an inspiration to many people.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the best way to improve the level of technical skills in the west midlands would be to get behind the proposals from the region’s local authorities and local enterprise partnerships for a combined authority and elected mayor with devolved skills budgets to improve skills, bring former industrial sites back into use, provide more housing and better transport links, and get the economy of the west midlands really moving?

[Sajid Javid]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the proposal for a west midlands combined authority looks exciting and should be taken seriously. Obviously, the Government are considering all the proposals and need to look at their merits. I have met a number of people behind that proposal and it would be great to see whether we can work together and bring it forward.

Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

No. I am going to make the case for the Bill, and the House will then have the opportunity to listen to the hon. Gentleman. I understand from today’s press that he would take a different approach: instead of trusting experts and heads, he would recreate local education authorities on a grand scale. I am sorry to say that he has shown once again that he is unable to resist the constant itch of the Labour party throughout the ages to seize back power from professionals on the ground and give it instead to politicians and bureaucrats.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State knows that it is complete nonsense to pretend that Opposition Members are totally opposed to academies. She is trying to invent a ridiculous political dividing line when none exists on that issue. The truth is that some schools that are academies perform well and some schools that are academies perform poorly. In my constituency, the schools that have consistently performed worst are both academies and her Department has done nothing at all about it. There are good schools and poor schools in the maintained sector; the real crisis in education is in teacher recruitment and the quality of headteachers, and her proposals and speech have absolutely nothing to say about that.

[Nicky Morgan]

I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members are in favour of academies, in which case they should go into the Lobby tonight to support the Bill, which makes it clear that we will not tolerate failure in schools across this country and will take swift action, regardless of whether they are academies or maintained schools. The Opposition’s amendment is muddle-headed because they have tried to find a reason to oppose the Bill, but they cannot. The hon. Gentleman and Opposition Members do not understand what is needed to tackle failure and have found a spurious reason to table an amendment. If they support academies, they should join us in the Lobby tonight.

Skills and Growth

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

One of the interesting components of both the rise in the popularity of apprenticeships, which I know the hon. Gentleman is doing a great deal to support, and some of the costs associated with university is that we have a much greater insight into the relative success of an apprenticeship compared with a degree. I think there is more realism about what young people can get from each institution. The hon. Gentleman has a point and I would take it right back to the mass conversion of polytechnics to university status. I am not sure that that was necessarily the best initiative introduced by the Conservative party, but we can also think about that 50% target being the best use of some of the human capital.

We need to be more ambitious when it comes to developing an institutional pathway for advanced technical skills, whether they are called national colleges or institutes of technical education. We need far more stringent and demanding apprenticeships, which I know the hon. Gentleman supports. Indeed, I would suggest that what we need on apprenticeships is not dissimilar to the dramatic reduction in the number of semi-vocational, grade-inflating, GCSE-equivalent qualifications following the Wolf report—arguably the Government’s most important achievement in education over the past five years. Far too many children in communities such as Stoke-on-Trent were put on courses with little or even no labour market value, and yet there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a similar, gallery-pleasing numbers game is developing with the re-badging of short-term, low-quality workplace training as apprenticeships.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

We have to be very careful about the argument that there are too many young people going to university. In areas such as mine, where long-term youth unemployment is three times the national average, not enough young people are going to university, doing apprenticeships or advanced apprenticeships, or continuing to study at all.

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is totally right. He has made the case in Dudley—and the same is true of Stoke-on-Trent—that we need many more young people to be doing level 3, 4 and 5 qualifications. I would like to see a much more amphibious relationship between our universities and apprenticeships, so that young people can move in and out of them and at each stage go up the value chain with the qualifications they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I will certainly look at the report. [Interruption.] I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for helpfully prompting me, but I am able to tell when I have heard female Members of Parliament from both sides of the House make excellent contributions. As I was saying, I will certainly look at the report.

The overall point that the hon. Lady makes about a skills shortage is absolutely right. Those seeking employment or looking for engineers would have started their education under the previous Labour Government, but she has made her point and she is right to identify that we need more highly skilled young people, particularly in engineering.

[Ian Austin]

The Secretary of State and I get on well, and she knows I have a high regard for a lot of what she does, but we have to get away from this sterile debate in which she claims that everything was terrible under the last Labour Government and that everything is brilliant now. The truth is that we did not do nearly well enough and the current Government are not doing nearly well enough either. We face a long-term crisis in the quality of education and skills, so we need to drop this ridiculous habit of dressing up relatively minor differences as huge ideological chasms. We need a royal commission so that we can agree as a country that education and skills are the No. 1 priority and to set cross-party, long-term goals enabling every child to fulfil their potential.

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we get on well. We have had some interesting conversations—I am not sure that is good for his career in the Labour party, but I do not think he is standing for anything in the upcoming Labour party elections, so perhaps it will not be too damaging. He and I agree on the importance of academies and the success they bring, so it is a great shame that, as we will probably hear on Monday, other Labour Members are rowing back from the reform introduced by a Minister in the last Labour Government. A royal commission would mean more hot air and time. We have made enormous progress in the past five years in giving young people the right skills, providing more apprenticeships and getting people into university, and I am grateful for his support for that.

I want to make some progress, because I know that other hon. Members want to contribute. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central talks about being pithy, but he did not typify that today when he spoke.

We have stripped out 3,000 poor-quality qualifications so that the only vocational qualifications are those backed by employers that lead to a job. In addition, we have put in place rigorous 16-to-19 tech levels endorsed by employers and leading to a technical baccalaureate for the most talented. Every qualification for which young people now study, be it academic or vocational, will be demanding and rigorous and provide a clear route to employment. English and maths are critical to successful progression to employment, which is why all students now have to continue studying them if they do not get a good GCSE.

The quality of apprenticeships is rising too. Every apprenticeship now needs to be a paid job in the workplace, to last 12 months and to include meaningful training on and off the job. Employers can design the standard an apprentice must reach, and the reformed funding provisions mean that the training apprentices receive follows the needs of their employers. New traineeships are helping young people who need extra work experience, as well as English and maths education, to move on to a lifetime of sustained employment. Let us not forget that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central went into the election promising to scrap level 2 apprenticeships.

It is not often I agree with the TUC, but on this occasion I wholeheartedly agree with Unionlearn that scrapping apprenticeships in key areas, such as construction and plastering, would be a disaster for the young people for whom this provides their opportunity. Young people need resilience and character to get back up in the face of adversity. If we are to have high expectations for every child, we have to create the right conditions for those high expectations—conditions in which a love for learning can flourish—so that, when young people leave school, they can bounce back from the knocks life throws at them. That is why I announced at the end of the last Parliament £3.5 million in character grants to support work to develop civic awareness, resilience and grit in schools, and it is why we will offer any young person who wants it the opportunity to participate in the National Citizen Service.

There is more to do, however. The rising participation age gives us the chance to ensure all young people are on the right path to the world of work. We will ensure that the routes are clear and that all young people have options leading to outcomes with real labour market currency. There will be no dead ends. We are developing a comprehensive plan to increase to 3 million the number of apprenticeships in this Parliament. That will include more work with large employers, more support for small businesses and a greater role for the public sector. We will put in place the right incentives and support to ensure that everyone is earning or learning, including support for young people who are not in education, employment or training or at risk of not being—I am pleased to say that the number of NEETs is already at a record low. Catch-up support will also be in place to provide a stepping stone to employment.

We want to ensure that in every area of the country there are strong institutions making available a full range of specialisms to every child, based on collaboration between different providers and institutions. University technical colleges and studio schools are unique in how they develop their education around the needs of local employers, and I would like to send my congratulations to UTC Reading on being the first to be judged “outstanding” by Ofsted.

I am proud to defend the work of the last Government on improving the knowledge, skills and life prospects of the next generation. Now, as part of our commitment to securing real social justice, we are determined to ensure that the reforms of the last Parliament—the innovation and progress we unleashed—reach every young person in every part of our country. If governing for one nation means anything, it is ensuring that the education we provide—be it academic, professional or technical—gives every student the chance to realise their full potential and to be all they can be. We will be asking the House to reject the motion this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. I am pleased that the UTCs are leading the way for the education system now to include ways of getting a job in the whole process, rather than that being an afterthought at a careers fair, as it used to be in the sixth form.

[Ian Austin]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am an evangelist for the UTC programme. Does he agree that we need a massive expansion of the programme, so that we have a UTC in every town? They should become part of the fabric of education so as to give more young people the opportunity to learn in a vocational setting. Every child in the country should have that choice, not just the ones in Watford and the other towns that have UTCs at the moment.

[Richard Harrington]

It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman to learn that I agree with every word he has said. It is important that Members on both sides of the House should champion UTCs in their constituencies. Their development is driven by individual people, whatever the Government policy might be. The Baker Dering Educational Trust is really good, but in the end, one individual has to drive the development of a UTC. If the local Member of Parliament could be that individual, or find that individual, it would help tremendously. That is how the academy programme started. Lord Adonis found individuals and talked to them over lunch—which they usually paid for, I might add—to persuade them to establish academies. So I think that engagement is okay.

I am conscious of Mr Deputy Speaker’s guideline time of eight minutes, but I hope that he will allow me to deduct the time I spent congratulating the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire on his maiden speech, because I want to talk a little bit about academies. [Hon. Members: “Cheeky!”] Well, I have learned that we can speak in this place until they tell us to shut up—that is for the benefit of new Members—although Mr Deputy Speaker is far too gentlemanly to say that. [Interruption.] I am not going to talk about academies. He has given me the look, so I shall go straight on to apprenticeships.

I think there is consensus that apprenticeships are the key mechanism for getting skills into the workplace where they are needed. Unfortunately, for a lot of people of my generation and above, apprenticeships still carry the image of some bloke who could not get into any form of education lying around in a boiler suit with a spanner. I commend the coalition Government for taking steps to show that that was a ridiculous and ignorant assumption. The first apprentices I ever met in my constituency were doing what used to be called bookkeeping—it is actually business administration—which I confess appeared to me in my ignorance to be completely unrelated to apprenticeships. The number of apprenticeships achieved under the last Government—2.3 million starts, according to the Secretary of State—is commendable. I am sure everyone would agree that apprenticeships are becoming much more sophisticated, and the announcement by Ministers of a comparison with degree level education is absolutely right.

In the time remaining, I would like to concentrate on two things that we need to overcome, both of which are related to sentiment. A lot of work still needs to be done to enhance the status of apprenticeships. The first thing relates to schools: I do not believe that they do enough to promote apprenticeships. That is based on my experience in my constituency. The teaching profession is very much geared towards graduates, as most of its members are graduates. [Interruption.] Will you bear with me for one minute, Mr Deputy Speaker? [Interruption.] Okay, two minutes—[Laughter.] I’ll take five if you like.

The second point relates to the status of apprenticeships among young people. Will the Minister have another look at the original proposal for a royal college of apprenticeships? Under such an arrangement, everyone graduating from an apprenticeship at whatever level would have an independent certification. That would do a lot to help employers to change their sentiments towards apprenticeships, and it would certainly mean a lot to the apprentices if they could become members of the royal college.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

We have to make education and skills our country’s No. 1 priority. Improving education is the answer to our country’s biggest challenges, as it brings better paid and more secure jobs to areas that have lost their traditional industries, tackles poverty and improves social mobility, boosts productivity, builds a stronger economy and enables us to tackle the deficit.

The only way our country will pay its way, let alone prosper, is with the skills we need to compete. Germany has three times as many apprentices as the UK. The number of young apprentices and apprentices in IT and construction is falling and, although I welcome degree-level apprenticeships, they account for less than 2% of the total number. On education, we are no longer merely falling behind Finland, South Korea and Germany in basic numeracy and literacy but behind Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well. Think about this: we are the only country in the developed world in which those approaching retirement are more literate and numerate than those entering the workforce.

Children today will work with technologies that have not yet been invented or even imagined. They will have more than a dozen jobs over their lifetime, so they must learn how to adapt, how to learn and how to acquire new skills, but a CBI survey found that nearly a third of employers were dissatisfied with school leavers’ basic literacy and numeracy.

We should all agree—all parties, the Government, schools, colleges, universities, the teaching profession and businesses—on clear long-term targets to improve education and provide the skills we need to compete. The CBI is right to call for a cross-party review of 14-to-19 education considering exams, the curriculum and the status of vocational education so that we can plan properly for the future and prevent the sort of problems we face in Dudley at the moment.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real need for greater and better capacity in vocational education for children with special educational needs, particularly for 14 to 19-year-olds?

[Ian Austin]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right. As he represents Dudley South, he will know that Dudley College has just opened fantastic new facilities on The Broadway. I do not know whether he has had a chance to visit yet, but he definitely should. It provides fantastic opportunities for young people with profound disabilities and learning difficulties. It is a unique institution, the first of its kind in the country. It is another brilliant success, which is down to Principal Lowell Williams and his colleagues, and it is an example that colleges around Britain should be following. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I look forward to working with him to drive up educational standards and improve standards not just for children with special needs but for all children in Dudley over the next five years.

Under the brilliant leadership of Lowell Williams and his colleagues, Dudley College has not only provided those fantastic facilities but has transformed our town centre and opportunities for local people. Our new manufacturing college, Dudley Advance, has been developed with Aston University and local manufacturers. We have a new vocational centre, a new sixth form college and plans for a new construction centre. Ministers will be pleased to hear that the vast majority has been funded by more efficient use of the college’s own resources and not by external funding. Ofsted has rated all aspects of the college’s provision as “good” or “outstanding” in its most recent inspections and the college has been named one of the top three colleges in the country for students completing apprenticeships, with nine out of 10 students successfully completing their training compared with 69% nationally.

Mr Williams and his colleagues are helping local businesses to grow, educating young people and helping adults to get new jobs, too. They are doing exactly what Ministers have asked of them, but far from supporting their work, Government policies are putting courses and places at risk.

Cutting the adult skills budget by 24% means that Dudley College will lose £1.4 million, so 30 jobs are at risk and 1,500 places will be cut, most of which are employability programmes for unemployed adults and workplace qualifications in health and social care, early years and construction. The college faces further 20% reductions in each of the following two years, removing another 1,700 adult places. Thousands of adults struggling to find work will lose their retraining and many more jobs are at risk.

Dudley College has worked hard to help Ministers to increase apprenticeships, doing exactly what they want and making it by far the largest provider in the region. In May, the college again requested additional places from the Skills Funding Agency for 16 to 18-year-olds in areas such as engineering, manufacturing and care, which, again, is exactly what the Government want it to do. The agency indicated that that would be possible, as it was in previous years, but the funding is now at risk after the Chancellor’s announcement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education must find £450 million of savings this year.

Spending on 16 to 18-year-olds is unprotected and apprenticeship providers are worried that the SFA will not be able to deliver the promised funding. That is the complete opposite of the long-term planning needed to fix the skills gap. Dudley College must either turn away 150 apprentices in priority areas or deliver the training without any funding. The college has also requested growth for 2015-16 and beyond, but how will the Government meet their target of 3 million additional apprentices if they cannot fund the growth at successful institutions, such as Dudley College, that are already doing a brilliant job and delivering exactly what the Government want?

Finally, Dudley College is now particularly vulnerable to changes in the amount of funding that the Education Funding Agency will offer for courses for 16 to 19-year-olds. That has been another growth area, with the EFA set to fund places for an extra 263 learners next year. A significant part of the college’s investment in new facilities such as Dudley Advance has been based on the expectation that EFA funding will increase, but the Chancellor’s announcement threatens that funding too, and any change in the number of funded places or the rate of funding will damage the college’s ability to meet local needs skills such as manufacturing. That comes on top of an 8% reduction in funding per learner in the past four years and a 22% funding reduction for 16-year-olds.

All of that shows why we should listen to the CBI, launch a cross-party inquiry and set out a long-term plan to tackle our country’s skills gap and, as I said at the outset, make education and skills our country’s No. 1 priority. But for a long-term plan to work, the Government need to give colleges the certainty they need to keep growing to meet demand.

Will the Minister work with the Skills Funding Agency to set out urgently the number of places it will fund in the coming year? Will he and the Business Secretary set out plans to meet the spending reductions as soon as possible, so that providers know how much funding will be available in the future? Will he come to Dudley and join me and the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) in visiting the college, where he will be able to meet Mr Williams and his colleagues, see the brilliant work they are doing and help them solve the problems they face?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. To be helpful, Ms Rayner, I just want to let you know that when you say “you,” that means me, and I do not want to accept any responsibility for what you are accusing others of. I have taken the blame, so I do not know why Government Front Benchers got quite so upset.

[Ian Austin]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would never use the sort of appalling, sexist language that the former First Minister of Scotland used to describe the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), but is it in order for her to chunter from the Government Front Bench all the way through an Opposition Member’s speech, and as loudly as possibly—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. We both know that that is not a point of order. It is for the Chair to decide that, and I must say that I thought on this occasion the Minister was much quieter than she normally is, so let us not worry about it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and I am grateful to him for his support. I was delighted to visit his constituency and hear more about the Berkeley Green University Technical College. Free schools are accountable to me, through their funding agreement, for operation, governance and finances. They are responsible through the Ofsted inspection framework for the quality of their education and they work closely with their relevant regional schools commissioner.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

T6. I am absolutely delighted that the brilliant headteacher at Ellowes Hall school in Dudley, Andy Griffiths, was honoured with an OBE at the weekend. Popular and successful schools such as his have to turn away countless children every year because they do not have enough space. Will the Secretary of State update the House on the discussions that he and I had with her predecessor and Lord Nash about putting parents in charge, thereby enabling well run over-subscribed and financially sound schools to provide the places that are needed and to pay off the loans with the revenue that the extra pupils will bring?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I too welcome the honour awarded to the former headteacher of Ellowes Hall sports college. He and I have discussed that matter already; we want to look at it again. Academies can apply for loans for capital works as part of the condition improvement fund. I understand that the college did not apply for such a loan in the last CIF round, and it is something that we will consider further.