Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the Baker Dearing trust. I have four comments on this Bill. First, I welcome its proposals to create a skills plan for each town in the country. Secondly, it has missed the opportunity to revolutionise digital skills, which are the weakest part of our present education system. Thirdly, I am very concerned that this Bill could lead to the separation of technical education from academic education, a concern shared by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Fourthly, I will move an amendment to make the Baker clause a statutory duty, rather than dependent upon ministerial advice.

First, I am glad to see that skills plans will now emerge for every town in England, reflecting the needs of the local medium and small-sized businesses. These plans will reveal the skills that the FE colleges will need to teach. It will certainly put industry at the heart of education. This is exactly what university technical colleges have been doing for the last 10 years. The governing body of a UTC is controlled by the local businesses and the local university. The university comes in to teach, and the local businesses bring in projects for the students to work on in teams. I thank the Government for adopting the UTC principle of combining technical and academic education.

Secondly, all the evidence that we are getting in the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment reveals that there is a dramatic shortage of digital skills. Businesses, students and even the unemployed all say that they suffer from not having digital skills. In a survey of 1,000 companies big and small, ranging from nuclear to pubs, 76% said that they lack digital skills, notably data analysis with AI, and this restricts their growth and reduces their profits. We have also been sent evidence—and this I find totally surprising—that, since 2015, in schools for 11 to 16 year-olds, 40% fewer students are being taught about computing than six years ago. That is a staggering statistic in the digital age; it beggars belief. What the Government need to do is to provide all students with a laptop and an internet connection; computing should be taught from the age of 11 for at least one hour a week and that should grow each year. GCSE computing science should be a compulsory subject. There are 75,000 computer GCSE entries: it sounds a lot, but it is 1.5% of the total and fewer than those who take Spanish GCSE. This will need a revolution in teacher training, for all teachers should be expected to acquire digital skills.

Thirdly, I fear that this Bill will separate technical education from academic education, so that there is virtually no connection between them when they should be going hand-in-hand. At 16, school leavers can go to FE colleges, start apprenticeships or go to a provider of technical education where their training will reflect the needs of local employers, and that is good. However, less than a quarter of young people who start at an FE college at 16 will progress to level 4, a critical age where the skills gap really begins, and an insignificant number will then start a higher or degree apprenticeship.

Most students at 16 will stay on in the sixth forms at their schools, and the heads of those schools will tell them that the only way that they can get into university is to stay in school and study academic A-Levels. There are no engineering A-levels and very few technical ones. Technical education between 16 and 18 barely exists because the courses are costly and the teachers are few, so it is not surprising that many 18-year-olds leave with no employability skills. No wonder that 16 to 18 unemployment is now 14.4% and likely to rise.

Evidence presented to the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment is that employers do not want just exam results but employability skills, such as having worked in teams, made things with hands, designed things on computers and engaged in problem-solving. They are looking for adaptability, creativity—which the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, mentioned earlier today—and imagination. This will not happen if technical and academic education are separated in two separate silos—one marked “technical and vocational” and the other “academic”. What happens then to the parity of esteem? The Government should act to ensure that this educational apartheid does not come about.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I am, if you like, travelling hopefully with this Bill. I think the glass is half full, and that that is the way we need to approach it. We know that we need to improve productivity in this country and that to do that we need to improve our skill base. The other, most fundamentally important thing we must do is ensure that we do not unwittingly create a lost generation of young children who are left claiming benefits or, worse, doing nothing at all or getting involved in criminal activity. That is the challenge: to create a framework which will improve skills, give opportunities to young people and embrace at a local level all those participants who need to be embraced.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate. I will address principally Amendment 81 but also the general points raised by my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden.

The Bill basically focuses on education for 16 to 19 year-olds, but it cannot be looked at just as a separate section; it depends on what has happened between 11 and 16. If you have made a mess of 11 to 16, you cannot compensate for it by this Bill. I believe that, since 2010, we have made a mess of 11 to 16 education. This is really what is behind the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker; she is talking about disadvantaged children. The proportion of disadvantaged children today—you are usually considered to be disadvantaged if you do not get level 4 in English and maths—is between 30% and 35%. That is not a small minority—it is over 2 million students who failed, after 14 years of free state education, to acquire a basic literacy and numeracy qualification. It is a huge indictment of the English education system and what has been imposed upon it since 2010.

In 2010, Michael Gove imposed his curriculum on schools, without any consultation whatever. His curriculum, known as EBacc or Progress 8, consists of eight academic subjects: two English, one maths, three science, one foreign language and either history or geography. That is a grammar school curriculum; it is an academic curriculum. It excludes any sort of technical training, computer training, design training or cultural studies. Since 2010, there has been no fall in the number of disadvantaged children: the number then was roughly the same as it is now, at 30% to 35%. It was the same in 2015, when the Conservatives took control; there has been no significant improvement. I fear that there is absolutely no doubt that the attainment gap between the brightest and the less bright students will have grown substantially during Covid.

The victims of this policy are the disadvantaged and the unemployed. No one has mentioned the level of unemployment. Youth unemployment is now at 14.8%, which is very high—three times the national average—but there has been no mention at all of that. Nor has there been mention, so far, of students in the Bill; they have been left out like the mayors mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—they are not mentioned at all. I see no measure in the Bill that will prove a significant change in dealing with the skills gaps in our country.

The other matter that I am concerned about is that the Bill should have been a wonderful opportunity to create a combination of academic and technical education but, in fact, it makes the division even greater. The Bill is saying that if you stay on at school in the sixth form, that is the best way to get to university. When it is passed, the heads of every secondary school will say to their students, “Don’t go down that technical route, you’ll never get to university. Stay with us.” So all the rest will go down this technical route, and that is a real divide.

In Clause 4, the Bill actually says that schools and 16 to 19 academies will not be allowed to teach technical education. It says it in statute. I never thought that I would see that particular definition in an English law—least of all brought back by a Conservative Government, I may say. That is a complete bifurcation: there is an academic route and a less academic route. This is not really what should happen. The schools that I have established over the last 12 years include both academic and technical education and we have magnificent results, but the Bill really does not have that role in it whatever. It is educational apartheid—I do not use that word lightly, but that is what this is; there are two clear routes in future. Where is the parity of esteem, when the secondary head can say to his children, “Stay with me and you will get to university, because I will do those eight academic subjects, and we will get you through your A-levels as well”?

I am afraid that there is no real advantage in the Bill for the disadvantaged students, and I regret that very much indeed. When we talk about disadvantaged children, just remember that in every child there is a bit of flint. Sometimes you have to dig very deep for it, but that is the purpose of education—to find that bit of flint and create a spark, or, as Shakespeare said:

“The fire i’th’ flint


Shows not till it be struck.”


That flint has to be found long before 16; it has to be found at primary level and at secondary level and this is what we are failing to do as a country.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I ought first to declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I looked at these amendments and found myself agreeing with every single one. I looked back and remembered when we had the technical education Bill and, when we were in Committee in the Moses Room, I think there were probably about eight to 10 of us. How wonderful it is now to see how people have realised the importance of technical and vocational education—we have a proper Committee for a further education/vocational education/skills Bill.

I do not have a problem with local skills improvement plans—does anyone? It seems eminently sensible that you look at the needs of each locality in terms of business, job creation and development, and put that plan together. It is not something where you say, “Nationally, we will all do this”; you look at each local area. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, talk about Cumbria. He will be pleased to know that I spent a week in Keswick and, as we walked around, virtually every single restaurant, hotel and shop had an advert pleading for people to work in the hospitality industry. Clearly, that is a skill that is needed in that area. It is obviously brought about because of Brexit, but that was a problem even when we were in the EU—there were not enough people in the hospitality industry.

I look at my own city of Liverpool, and back in the 1960s and 1970s we were the poorest region in Europe and, as a result, we qualified for what was called Objective 1 money—nearly €1 billion, I think. We got that twice; we got two tranches because our GDP was among the lowest in Europe. Why did we get a second tranche? Because the first time we failed completely to use the money effectively. We did not draw up a plan; we did not say, “What skills do we need? How can we turn the economy around?” We just sort of threw the money about. For example, FE colleges were booming with hairdressing and beauty treatment courses, so we gave them money to develop those courses. Yet there was a shortage at the time of engineers and of people in the construction industry, but there was no plan to say, “This is how we should be doing it.” So the notion of a local skills improvement plan seems eminently sensible.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. Bearing in mind that questions have been raised about the structure and nature of the Bill, it may be useful to deal with those points first. The Bill will provide a framework. It gives the Secretary of State power to designate an employer representative body. That is not necessarily a group of employers but, as outlined in Bill, a body required to be “reasonably representative” of employers in the local area.

With respect to the framework, as was mentioned by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, there is a balance to be struck between not wanting to dictate centrally and having as much flexibility as possible, so that it is not prescriptive from the centre and the employer representative body can take into account a wide number of stakeholders and gather a wide range of evidence. This will set up a dynamic relationship. Clause 1(4) provides that the relevant providers have a duty to co-operate with the development or review of a local skills improvement plan. As some noble Lords have outlined, that duty places the further education colleges as a central plank in creating the plan for the local area. With respect to Clause 5, the plan is one thing that providers should have regard to when they are looking at local needs more generally.

I believe that noble Lords, at Second Reading and today, have had some concern about the scope of the local skills improvement plan. It is based on technical education—the beginning part of the Bill outlines what technical education is material for the purposes of the plan—but then the duty under Clause 5 for those providers is local needs. So it is much wider than just the technical education part that forms the central plank of the local skills improvement plan.

This will use the powers of the Secretary of State to designate that body and set up that dynamic relationship. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mentioned that relationship with the national priorities. The Skills and Productivity Board, which looks at national skills requirements, will be reporting later this year, so that will be a central coherent national skills outline that every local skills improvement plan will have access to and will be referenced in the guidance. Hopefully, that will produce the dynamic relationship between the national skills plan—so each of the areas will have the same plan for national skills—and the local area. At the local level, you have the employer representative body with a duty on the relevant providers to co-operate in that dynamic relationship.

Noble Lords have made some very powerful points, and maybe we are going to come down to a bit of a House of Lords point about “Do those points belong on the face of a piece of primary legislation or are these important considerations to include in the guidance?” From the nature of this legislation, it is a framework. The challenge that could be made to the Government if we were too prescriptive in the Bill would be that we were trying to Whitehall-lead this—and that cannot be.

On the trailblazer process—for the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—the current timetable is that the trailblazers will be announced later this month and end in March 2022. They will be important in fleshing out what should be in the statutory guidance that is mentioned in the legislation, and the national rollout will commence after Royal Assent. I hope that assures noble Lords that we have a timetable for this.

On the challenge about why this legislation is needed, there is a very clear DNA running through the technical education qualifications that one can see with apprenticeships, T-levels and the current review of levels 4 and 5. The majority of technical education qualifications in this country should be connected to an employer standard so that the employers know what that student can now do and the student knows what currency that qualification has. I recall serving with many noble Lords on the one-year Select Committee on Social Mobility; I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, served on it. For young people who do not go to university, the complexity of the qualifications —the uncertainty about what that level 2 or 3 actually meant for you and what it gave you at an interview—was clearly so different from walking into an interview with your GCSE or A-level certificates. That is what, in terms of parity of esteem, all these changes are meant to change. Students should know, “When I get that qualification, it gives me that competency”, and they can walk into an interview and the employer will know that level 3.5 in, say, forklift truck driving on an oil rig has that competency. The currency is standard and gives parity of esteem to these qualifications. That is why, as we will discuss in a later group, the employers are in the lead as the employer representative body. That is the consistent DNA in the technical education system that we are trying to embed to give that parity of esteem, not just through saying this about FE and HE but through the technical qualifications being as easy to understand by students and employers as a GCSE certificate is at the moment.

I have a final point. The Bill does not exclude any particular level of qualification. The definition at the start is about technical education that is material to the skills, capabilities and assessments in that area. It is not limited in that regard. Obviously an LSIP could include the level 1 or 2 kind of qualifications; it is not limited. The limiting is the technical education section of what the providers in a local area would have due regard to when considering the local skills improvement plan.

I hope that provides a useful framework before I deal specifically with some of the amendments that noble Lords have tabled and explain to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that this is not half-baked. There is a reason why this is a framework to ensure local flexibility. We have not defined “local”. When we have done these trailblazers we have allowed the economic area to define itself, so we are really trying to get a balance here in terms of a structure and a framework to enable local areas to take ownership of their local plans.

I note the points made by my noble friend Lord Lucas concerning the LSIPs and the skills, capabilities or expertise required by potential students. I know the whole Committee will agree that post-16 education and training should meet the needs of students effectively, not only to secure meaningful employment but to ensure that they have essential skills for life more broadly.

I point out to noble Lords that Ofsted already considers whether the curriculum considers the needs of learners as part of its inspections of all post-16 FE providers. Many of the core skills and capabilities that students need to succeed in life are already well known and are consistent across the country—for example, literacy, numeracy, ICT and, sometimes, English language skills—so that students can function and integrate effectively into society. However, as I have outlined, the key technical skills that employers need can vary significantly across areas. They continually evolve to respond to new opportunities and challenges, and that is where the local skills improvement plan will make a valuable contribution.

By identifying the skills, capabilities and expertise required by employers in a specified area and, importantly, that may be required in future, which is specifically outlined in Clause 1(6)(b), a designated employer representative body will have clear evidence on the skills, capabilities and expertise that potential students will similarly require to help them secure good skilled jobs in the local area.

I reiterate that Clause 5 introduces a new duty on all institutions within the FE sector—namely, further education and sixth-form colleges and designated institutions—to keep all their provision under review to ensure that it is meeting local needs, including the needs of learners. At this point, to answer the point of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, there is no prescription in the Bill to say that 11 to 16 should not be teaching technical education. We have just said in Clause 4, in relation to the relevant providers being under a duty to co-operate, that at this stage we have not given that burden to schools. It is clear in Clause 4 that by regulation the Secretary of State can change that and make them one of the relevant providers that would then have a duty to co-operate.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Will my noble friend give way?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

Sorry, no. On Amendment 2 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in relation to potential employers, start-up businesses and the self-employed, I strongly agree with her on the importance of ensuring that employers’ voices are central to the local skills improvement plan. That is why it is clear in the Bill that, once designated, the employer representative body must draw on the views of employers operating within an area to inform a local skills improvement plan. The definition of “employer” is wide and the employer representative body can take into account any other evidence. That is broad in order to ensure that they have flexibility to include, of course, the needs of the self-employed in the local area.

To effectively fulfil the role of summarising the skills needs of local employers, the designated body will need to convene and draw on the views of employers that are not part of the ERB itself, as well as other relevant employer representative sector bodies and any other evidence. That will ensure that it is as easy as possible for employers, especially small employers, to navigate local skills systems, engage and have their voice heard.

Turning now to Amendments 11 and 81, from the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her expertise and her unstinting efforts to support those who have not yet achieved their grade 4 or above in English and maths. I hope she will be pleased to know that although the coronavirus has slightly delayed the work with MHCLG and DfE, a strategy in relation to Gypsies, Roma and Travellers will be published, we hope, later this year.

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Finally, I am still thinking about whether we might want to put in a new clause amendment around an entitlement for post-16 learners to be able to access sustainable development education, but I will first listen to what the Minister has to say in response to this group before I decide whether I am persuaded that we need to go down that road.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I will speak in support of Amendment 25 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman, Lady Sheehan and Lady Morgan of Cotes, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. It contains a very interesting idea. It proposes that, when a local skills improvement plan has been devised for, say, Plymouth or Newcastle or Doncaster, the Secretary of State should examine it to see whether it accords with the national skills strategy and—this is of particular interest to the noble Baronesses—the UK’s climate change and biodiversity targets; it could include other things where there are clear targets as well, of course. The sadness of this is that the noble Lords talk about the national skills strategy when there ain’t no such thing, I am afraid. I wish that there were, but it simply has not developed. It ought to develop because there is no doubt that there is a substantial deficiency across the country in skills in a whole variety of different industries.

The Government used to publish skills gaps. The body that did it was called the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. It was abolished by the Government in 2016 because a group of advisers said to them that they did not really think much about these skills gaps because they are often speculative guesses. I am afraid that this is a further example of a Government who are not listening because there is certainly a large number of skills gaps in our country.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I are both members of the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, which now takes evidence twice a week. We are getting a lot of evidence not only from businesses but from students themselves that there are skills gaps. For example, we had evidence from one think thank that had examined 1,000 companies in Britain, large and small, stretching from national audio technology to pubs. Of those 1,000 companies, 76% of the CEOs said that the thing that was holding them back most was the absence of data employees—data analysts in particular—and people who understood artificial intelligence. That was the biggest inhibition on their growth and development. If that is not a skills gap, I do not know what is, quite frankly.

There are skills gaps in a host of other industries. One recent example that I am sure Members of this House have seen is that we have suddenly discovered that there is a skills gap of 10,000 HGV drivers. I would have thought that this might have been anticipated at some stage and we would have realised that we were desperately short of these people. So many of them have gone back to eastern Europe and the Balkans, and they are not being encouraged to come back. The transport ministry should have had some idea of what was likely to happen in this area.

One body, the education think tank the Edge Foundation, of which for a time I was the chairman, tried to fill in the gap. It produced a series of reports. It established large committees for each industry involving industry and academics, estimating what the skills gaps were. The first one was on engineering. The skills gap there was 203,000. That figure was agreed and supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering. There was another one on digital skills. It was well over 100,000 two years ago; I suspect that it is much higher now. There was one on the creative industries, which showed a skills gap of 150,000. Yet, because these were not formal government statements, the Government took very little interest in and paid little regard to them. How can you fashion an education system if you have no idea what your national economy wants in the way of skilled workers? There is a dysfunction between the education system based on academic subjects and the needs of industry. There is absolutely no doubt about that. This is one of the causes of the high level of youth unemployment at the moment.

I suggest that the Government consider asking a department—not the Department for Education because it has very little connection with industry, but perhaps the DWP—to estimate and publish on a regular basis skill gaps for various industries. Without that, how can you shape education and training systems, and indeed an apprenticeship system, without knowing exactly what is needed by the local and national industries in our economy?

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, we listened with interest to some rather engaging and forceful Second Reading speeches on the first group this afternoon. I noted that my noble friend Lord Adonis took one view that this was a terrible Bill and my noble friend Lord Young of Norwood Green took a different one that this was actually a good Bill. I find myself somewhere in between, but I want to be more pragmatic than they are. This is Committee. We have some opportunities in Committee to make a Bill better. I hope that that is what we will achieve at least in some respects.

At Second Reading I chose to talk largely about the missed opportunity in the Bill to try to link what we do in the educational system with the huge challenges that climate change and getting to our net-zero target by 2050 pose for us. I hope the Government will take the amendments in this group really seriously, because they at least begin to do just that.

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[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I hope that the Minister will not, in her reply, dismiss this amendment out of hand and say it is totally unacceptable, because I suspect that, as the procedures develop for local skills plans, extra help will be needed. I speak as someone who, for the last 12 years, has had to involve local companies actively in the running of the schools that I have been promoting: university technical colleges. I can assure noble Lords it takes a long time to persuade companies to do this. It takes many meetings, and many companies look on it as a burden and an expense. So there is not a huge number of companies lining up to become members of the employment body.

I hope the Minister is listening to what I am saying and not reading her notes, because I think she would benefit from what I am saying. I suspect that the Government are going to have to change their policy in this respect. She expects the chambers of commerce, where the chambers of commerce exist, to be the employer representative bodies. Could I take her through the complexity of that? First, chambers of commerce will look on it as an extra expense, which it is going to be. They have to balance the interests of their own members as to whether they should listen to the big or small companies, the ones which are expanding or declining, and the ones which are loquacious or silent. The proposals they may make may offend several of their members. So it will involve a series of meetings, and probably visits to the companies. That is my experience from the last 12 years.

I ask the Minister: where there is not a chamber of commerce, who is going to institute the examination to determine the numbers on the local employer representative body? Who is going to do it? Have the Government yet thought this through? Who is physically going to do it? Who is going to then make a list of all the companies? Who is going to know about the companies? Who is going to visit the companies and persuade them to take an interest? Because it is a continuing interest: they will have to appoint somebody to serve on the body, and that is an expense to the company. Are the companies going to get a benefit from this? I have gone through this for the last 12 years, and I do not think the Government have an answer to that.

The Government may find that they need the assistance of local authorities, which know a lot of companies. They may also need the assistance of the LEPs. The LEPs do not appear in this Bill at all, but the LEPs have a statutory duty for vocational skills, and some of them have policies on vocational skills, and they know about the companies in their area, and they know about the companies in several towns in their area. In the Select Committee of which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I are members, we took evidence from the North East LEP. A lady called Michelle Rainbow turned up, and she obviously had taken a big interest in education. The North East LEP had a big scheme involving 70 primary schools. The LEPs might have all sorts of schemes the Government do not really follow, or that the Department for Education does not follow or know about, and in secondary education as well. They have this knowledge. Therefore, I hope that the Minister appreciates that there will have to be assistances in the whole procedure of establishing local skills plans. Certainly, the Government should listen to the LEPs in addition to the local mayors and the mayoral authorities as well.

One other voice that has not been heard in any clause in the Bill is that of the unemployed. I suspect that no one who has drafted the Bill in the Department for Education has talked to groups of unemployed young people and nor have many Ministers. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I sit on has now held meetings in Bolton and Nottingham, and this morning in London, talking to unemployed young people. The group that I talked to were six black young men and women, all of whom were unemployed, or trying to get employment, and their voices were remarkable. They answer a lot of the questions raised by this Bill. We asked them all why they were unemployed, and they explained that they had never been given information about employability at their ordinary schools. These are not people who have been to FE colleges and things of that sort. They left their ordinary secondary schools with no understanding of how industry and commerce work and with no employability skills because they had just been doing academic subjects. They were very passionate this morning. They said, “We left with no employer skills, no data skills.” I asked whether any of them had learned about computing in their schools, and they said, “No, we didn’t have lessons on computing at all.” Many of them left with no communication skills, but they certainly developed them in applying for jobs. They have no experience of working in teams, but they are often asked by employers whether they have worked in teams.

These voices should be listened to. If you are replanning the whole basis of technical education in our country, then listen to people like this. They have a voice, they are concerned, and they are the victims of our failure to educate them adequately to get jobs. I hope that the department will perhaps take some knowledge of that. I urge the Government not to dismiss this amendment too lightly because what it proposes is likely to be needed.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, today’s debate has not progressed very fast in terms of groups, but we have covered a great deal of ground and, through the debate, have almost developed a shadow Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, suggested. I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said, as I often do. It is clear that the structure of the Bill needs to be rethought. One crucial area is the place for local authorities and regional and city mayors in making skills plans, which a large number of amendments in this group address.

Although the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about the economic strategy of the region, I would rather talk about a transformation strategy for a region. Levelling up is about much more than just the economy. It is not even about just the environment and the economy; it is about the well-being and social capital of the region contributing to every aspect of life, the community and family. You might even call it a public health approach to skills and post-16 education. If we are thinking about public health on that broad scale, this is something that clearly needs to be democratically decided. Elected people should be leading the development of skills development plans, or perhaps, as an alternative suggestion, we might want to think about drawing up a people’s assembly approach, something to put on the table at least, and something that the Minister might like to talk about to her colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, because I know that she has had very good experience with such direct, deliberative democracy.

The term “employer representative body” reminds me, very uncomfortably, of local enterprise partnerships. Some noble Lords have spoken of them with great approval and, in some places, undoubtedly some good work has been done, but they are not in any way representative of the people or the community. They are, by definition, the status quo in an area. They are invested in the way things are, in our current, unequal, poverty-stricken, planet-destroying system.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment that my noble friend Lord Willetts has just spoken to and the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, concerning T-levels. This gives us an opportunity to discuss T-levels, probably for the first time.

The Bill gives the Institute for Apprenticeships far too great a power in that it can decide, without any constraints, to abolish a qualification. In the past, this has lain with Ministers. Some Ministers have used it in a very absolute way and done it without consultation, while some have consulted. The power to cancel qualifications was probably seen best in Michael Gove when he abolished all technical qualifications in 2012, which determined the curriculum of all schools thereafter. It determined the basis of EBacc and Progress 8. The cancellation of qualifications is a very important political, as well as an educational, issue.

The Government are now promoting T-levels as the technical qualification at 18. I do not think they will ever abolish A-levels because no T-level that has been announced so far has been required to guarantee A-level maths as the level of maths at that level. There will be many engineering and manufacturing companies that will still require someone who is 18 to have passed A-level maths.

The practice under which T-levels has been established is that each subject has to be 20% practical and 80% academic. That is quite a small element for a technical qualification. At university technical colleges, students from 14 to 16 do 40% practical and 60% academic. When they become 16, they do 60% practical and 40% academic because by that time they will have mastered a series of tools and machinery—drilling machinery, turning machinery, lasers and all the very complicated equipment of engineering companies. They will have also learned to make things with their hands doing projects. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, asked whether the engineering T-level will give students that degree of experience at 18. It seems highly unlikely that it will not.

There is a digital T-level. We are trying to make it work in UTCs, and we are still experimenting with it. Once again, the general feeling is that it is very academically based with far too much concentration on coding and not digital skills, which are much wider than coding and relate to things such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and robotics. T-levels will succeed only if they are accepted by two groups: universities at one end and industry at the other.

For decades, industry has been accustomed to BTECs. Engineering and manufacturing companies up and down the country know exactly what they will get for a BTEC qualification or a BTEC extended diploma. In fact, the extended diploma is so important that it is one of the two subjects that industry requires to be provided to appoint an advanced or higher apprenticeship. Two qualifications are needed: A-level in maths, physics or chemistry and a BTEC extended diploma. This means that employers know that the students whom they employ will have had wide experience of using tools and machinery, making and designing things and problem solving. I have no idea whether that can be provided by the T-level engineering, but, if it is only 20% technical, I would have thought that the chances are slender.

My other point is that, technical qualifications have to be very wide, not narrow; they are not as narrow as academic qualifications. Over the years, industry has recognised their quality. The bedding in of T-levels will take some time. Not only universities but also businesses will have to see whether they are in fact providing the degree of technical expertise that they require. That will take some years to establish. Therefore, I hope that we have less talk of abolishing BTECs early on in order to give preference to T-levels before people really know what constitutes a successful T-level and what does not.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, have both withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

This amendment therefore proposes that two-thirds of the levy money should go towards apprenticeships for the under-25s—the 16 to 24 age group. That would transform the way we move people from education into work. It would reinforce the argument that we wish to present our school students with a genuine choice of equal status and attractiveness to the traditional academic route, and it is what the apprenticeship levy scheme should have been aimed at all along. So that is the nature of the amendment. I hope that it commends itself to the Government and the Minister. We are rather looking for a little substantive meaning to the phrase “levelling up”. I think Amendment 76 might help the Government in their dilemma, because I think it can be described as, on the whole, reinforcing a genuine levelling-up agenda in the world of education and apprenticeships.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly support the amendment moved by my colleague and noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham. We are both members of the House of Lords Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, as are the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who is a supporter of this amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, who speaks for the Liberals. We are exploring all ways in which we can improve skills training in our country, which is pretty dismal at the moment and compares very badly with many European countries.

One aspect that the Government boast of is the lifetime guarantee. This affects in particular those people who do not have A-levels and decide in their 30s, 40s or 50s that they would like to take an A-level course. To do that they will have to pay a course fee of about £5,000 to £6,000 a year, for which they may require a loan. As they are studying, they could not apply for the minimum wage or universal credit so, if they are unemployed, they would almost certainly have to take out a maintenance loan of another £6,000 or £7,000. So we would be asking unemployed people to pay £12,000 to acquire an A-level qualification that, had they stayed at school, they would have got for free. It is simply outrageous and unacceptable, and it makes a complete farce of what a lifetime guarantee is.

I am very hopeful that the Government will accept this amendment. Why am I hopeful? Well, about four weeks ago, the Government announced a skills fund on which they are going to spend about £2.5 billion. They suggested four items on which the fund could be based, the first of which was £93 million for free A-levels. They have now said that they want to go into consultation on the skills fund, which means that those original four proposals are on ice. I suggest that they should think very carefully and put the first item back in. That would be a way for the Government to fund this. Can the Minister tell us whether the four items of expenditure on the skills fund are on ice? They have spent most of the £2 billion among them.

I would go further than my noble and learned friend has done. If you go to an FE college at 18 and you get to level 3, you will want, if you are able enough, to go on to level 4, the higher national certificate, or level 5, the higher national diploma. This is where the main skills gap in our country is. If you analyse the skills gap in digital, in engineering or in the creative industries, you see that it is greatest at levels 4 and 5. These are two qualifications just below degree level—you would describe those taking them as high-quality technicians—and we have a huge skills gap in that area. We should be promoting levels 4 and 5.

A course at level 4, which currently costs about £6,000 or £7,000, should be free. If an unemployed person is doing that, they will not be able to claim the living wage or universal credit, so they will need a maintenance grant of probably £6,000 or £7,000. So someone who wants to study at level 4 today for whom the alternative is unemployment has to find a loan of £12,000, which by the time they finish will be £15,000. I do not think that is at all reasonable. Strangely enough, neither did the Department for Education about nine or 10 months ago, because it put to the Treasury the proposal that level 4 should be free for unemployed youngsters, as should level 5, the higher national degree, which is just below level 6—a degree. The Government should consider this proposal and I hope our Select Committee will consider it as well. We have to stimulate real growth at levels 4 and 5. If we do not, our country will fall behind technologically.

I am sure the Government will accept my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke’s proposal today because it would be totally illogical and unfair not to accept it, but I hope they will think a little wider and broader because we have to upskill our country and catch up with Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. We are so far behind. This is a moment at which we can make significant changes for generations of young people to come.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I support both amendments in this group. I put my name down mainly to speak on Amendment 76, which has been so powerfully moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and to focus on Section 3, about apprenticeship funding for young people before the age of 25, which is badly needed.

The question I am asking myself is, how will this affect the overall funding of apprenticeships and how will it help to deliver, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, a stronger focus on levels 4 and 5 as well? Where are those apprenticeships going to come from, and what is going to persuade employers to provide those opportunities? Many employers, of course, have limited capacity to take on new staff, particularly young people coming directly from education without previous working experience, however much they might wish to do so if they could. The result has been that those employers tend to use their levy funds to upskill or reskill existing employees—although, as I have mentioned before, even that may use up only a limited proportion of their available levy funds. That creates yet another incentive for them to recast what training they need in the form of apprenticeships where they can.

So, I strongly support the amendment. My question is, where are those apprenticeships going to come from and what impact are they going to have on the ability of employers to focus on reskilling and upskilling at the same time? I suspect that a significant number of apprenticeships for young people are likely to come from SMEs, yet many are put off from offering apprenticeships because of the bureaucracy involved and a lack of time and resources to manage the process, despite the generous incentives available. I encourage the Government to look at offering specific, more generous incentives to SMEs to take on young people aged 25 or under for level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, including help with their administration and simplified arrangements for fee-paying employers to transfer part of their levy funds to SMEs for this specific purpose. There are such arrangements but they do not seem to be as effective as one might hope.

I always fail to understand why there cannot be more specific support and encouragement for apprenticeship training agencies to run apprenticeship programmes for SMEs, perhaps as a specific element of the local skills improvement plan for a particular area. That would seem a useful way in which an LSIP could contribute to the take-up of apprenticeships in its area, specifically among SMEs and new entrants to the job market, and maybe with a slight slightly broader applicability of the apprenticeship levy than it currently has.

I very much support the provisions in Amendment 80 putting the lifetime skills guarantee on a statutory footing. One of these days, I look forward to hearing an explanation of why the skills guarantee is “lifetime” and the learning entitlement is “lifelong” and what the difference may be; it would make many lives much easier if we just used one term. I hope the Government will accept the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, in particular and explain how they want to achieve a better balance between younger apprenticeships and level 4 and 5 apprenticeships, for example.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no further requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the mover, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I asked specifically about the skills fund. When it was published, the fund said that it had four items of expenditure—it is a huge fund of over £2 billion, and the first item was £93 million to pay for free training for A-levels. The Government are consulting again on the skills fund; is that proposal on ice or has it been withdrawn?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will have to undertake to get more detail for the noble Lord on that specific point. I can confirm two things: the current consultation on the skills fund does not mean that existing funding committed under that fund for this year has been put on ice. I referred to the national skills guarantee for level 3 qualifications—of course, a full level 3 is equivalent to A-levels—and the skills bootcamps, which are also funded this year. I undertake to write to him to address his specific point about A-levels.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendment refers to careers guidance. They are very appropriate to go into the Bill, and many different options run through them. The one tabled by my noble friend is more compact, but with more information than we find in some of the others. Any one of these approaches is valid, because we need to get something in the Bill that gives some guidance through our system of education.

At the moment, our teachers have gone through a series of exams—GCSEs, A-levels and university—and know what they are doing there. The system knows what it is doing. If we can provide a better service that takes people through the various aspects of what is on offer to various people—particularly in further education—they will get a better idea of what their options are as a student or person going through training, and can go back to refer to it.

The principle has had almost universal agreement; it is just about how we implement it. How will we make sure that somebody knows this quite complicated series of routes? It is further complicated by the fact that, at the moment, further education is the thing you do if you are not academic. The Bill suggests that there are ways forward for which a degree of academic rigour will be required but which are actually training—they are level 4 and 5 qualifications.

As has already been stated today, I have heard that we have been short of people qualified at technician level for 30 years—and I think the shortage goes back further than that. We have always had this problem. There has always been this approach of “Well, you can if you want to”, or “If your A-levels aren’t quite good enough to get to university, you can take on this.” There are myriad qualifications lower down—justifiably, because you have myriad training paths to go down. We will need somebody who studies the options to explain to students and parents how to proceed. I hope that we will get an idea in the debate about the Government’s thinking on this and how they will change the process because, at the moment, it does not matter what you do in the other sector if you do not let anybody know about it in a coherent and planned pattern.

If I remember correctly, my noble friend’s amendment would introduce interventions in certain years before students make decisions, which may well be a valid approach; certainly, it is as good as any I have heard so far. We must make sure that people understand, know, make decisions and plan their lives and the various steps so that they are taking these options on board—or at least are not ruling them out.

Most people generally know where they are headed in education by the age of about 14, so some form of intervention from about then onwards would be sensible, but it will be a difficult job and will require specialist, trained people with a great deal of knowledge to do it properly. It is something we should have done a long time ago, and I hope that, when she replies, the Minister will give us at least a coherent steer as to where the Government’s thinking is. At the moment, we are dealing with something that simply does not work and should have been dealt with a long time ago. I beg to move.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, first, I owe an apology. Normally when I speak in this House I ad lib from a handful of notes and do not read out a written speech. The last time I read out a written speech that I had written myself was 29 years ago, when I was a Minister. So I am breaking my record, and I am reading it out only because this matter involves the law. Not being a lawyer, I remember some advice my father gave me a very long time ago. He said, “When you grow up, be careful what you say to a priest, a doctor or a lawyer”. So I ask noble Lords’ forgiveness.

I declare my interest as chairman of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust. In 2017, the Government accepted my amendment to the Technical and Further Education Act to allow providers of alternative education, such as FE colleges, apprenticeship providers, private learning and training course providers, and university technical colleges, to go into secondary schools and explain to students the various alternative education pathways for their education and training. At the time this was looked on as a breakthrough in careers guidance.

When my old department was devising the legislation, I asked it to make it a statutory duty for schools to provide such meetings, but I was told that the Department for Education would depend on giving ministerial guidance to all secondary schools, and the secondary schools would follow. The advice was largely disregarded by schools and, when complaints were made to Ministers about schools refusing access to specific providers, such as university technical colleges, the department did not act on these complaints to insist that the meetings should take place. There has been no help from the department for the last three years.

This amendment would make it a statutory duty for all secondary schools to provide meetings with their students between 1 September and 28 February in each academic year. These dates are essential because school recruitment lists end on 31 March. By then, students will have selected which school/education pathway they wish to attend. The amendment specifically provides for years 8 and 9, year 11, and year 13, which means that 13 and 14 year-olds, 15 and 16 year-olds, and 18 year-olds will be advised of the various alternatives available for their education and training.

The amendment has secured cross-party support from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, from the Labour Party, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, from the Lib Dems, and the noble Lord, Lord Field, from the Cross Benches. I have taken separate legal advice and I am assured that this amendment would work satisfactorily.

I acknowledge that improvements to implement the Baker clause have been taken by Ofsted and the Government. Ofsted has said:

“If a school is not meeting the requirements of the Baker Clause, inspectors will state this in the inspection report. They will consider what impact this has on … CIEAG and the subsequent judgement for personal development.”


That is most welcome, although it does not directly say whether this would influence the inspectors’ judgment of the overall position of the school.

Robert Halfon, the chair of the Education Select Committee in the Commons, has said that, if a school has not implemented the Baker clause, it should not be rated either good or outstanding. I understand that he has support from members of his committee on that position. This is putting Ofsted’s judgment very close to the judgment on safeguarding, which merits inevitably an “inadequate”. It should also be remembered that only a relatively small number of schools get inspected each year, and some heads may be encouraged to delay a meeting so that it does not take place and risk whether that will be noticed. One should never underestimate the determination of heads of secondary schools to prevent their students knowing about alternative pathways and so keep them in their school’s sixth form, even knowing that several of them would do much better in alternative education.

The Government have also significantly improved the guidance, which was issued only on Friday in a document of 43 pages. I might be the only Member of the House who has read it from beginning to end. I do not recommend it for light reading. Page 7 confirms that the Baker clause has not been implemented; page 14 makes it clear that any complaint against a refusal of access should be heard locally and made to the governing body of the school, which will make a decision on it. This could be a lengthy and expensive process.

The case can then be referred to the Department for Education, but the department recognises that it cannot change an academy’s decision about a complaint—it does not have that power. The role of the department is solely to ensure that the complaint has been handled properly. This means that it is clear that the Baker clause does not impose a statutory duty to provide a meeting, because if it did the department could tell the school that it must arrange a meeting forthwith. No such direction has been given by the department over the last three years. So the present law is defective, and the Government recognise in this document that it has to be changed.

Page 35 makes it very clear that the department wants to see the Baker clause implemented. It says it will “consult on policy proposals” and announce these in September, and it plans to change the law for January 2022. I, of course, welcome that.

My amendment would provide a solution to this problem. I invite the department and the Minister to study it very carefully, as it would clearly create a statutory duty for a school to provide a meeting for all students of the appropriate ages between 1 September and 28 February. Those dates are very important as school admission lists close on 31 March. Therefore, a meeting in the summer term would be futile. Moreover, in the summer term schools are preoccupied with revision, and in June and July, as a result of exams, they are half empty.

I am also glad that the Government make it clear that heads cannot select to attend these meetings those students they want to off-roll and send to other schools. That is an improvement on what they have said in the past.

The guidance, which is good, goes on to say that all students must be able to attend to hear post-16 and post-18 options. This seems to exclude university technical colleges, studio schools and FE colleges that wish to recruit at 14. Year 8 students at the age of 13 must also hear these options. This is recognised in the guidance document on page 41, which says that events for UTCs should take place in the autumn term for year 8 students—a quite specific statement. That should also apply to studio schools and FE colleges—I hope that the Minister or the officials are noting that—because they also recruit at 14. I very much welcome that clarity. I am satisfied that it does make quite clear that UTCs can apply to have meetings in the autumn term, but I suggest that this could be extended to the spring term as well. It is a matter of logistics for the local school as to whether it is more convenient.

This is a very clear statement of the policy that the Government want to pursue, but it must be backed up with a statutory duty that schools must comply with the guidance. I suggest to the Government and to the Minister that, during Recess, I could meet with her—I have not had the chance to meet with her personally, which I am sure I would enjoy—and her officials, as they have made it clear that they would welcome views. When we return in September for Report, we will know what the legal position is. If it is satisfactory and the duty of the school is clearly defined, it will not be necessary to submit this amendment for debate. But if it is not clear and there is not a very clear duty for the schools to arrange these meetings, this amendment will be retabled and put to a decision of the House.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first time that I have engaged on Report, and I gather that I have to speak to the various amendments I have supported. I certainly strongly support the one that has just been dealt with, and I will also speak to Amendments 30 and 31.

That amendment would delay the whole implementation of the Bill by four years. I will explain why that is necessary. The Bill is one of the most extraordinary Bills that has been laid before Parliament because it has no policy in it. It sets up two administrative procedures, one to deal with a statement that appeared in the White Paper on education and one to deal with a paper that appeared out of the blue on 1 January this year, on abolishing thousands of technical qualifications, which was totally unexpected. The Bill sets up a framework.

As regards the White Paper qualification, a framework of employer representative bodies was set up to prepare skill plans for each of the towns where the employers live, which is a very interesting idea. It is a bit experimental, but it means that local industry could get involved in setting the curriculum for Darlington, Newcastle, Plymouth or Exeter, and that is a good thing. It engages industry, which determines what technical subjects it needs. The various bodies that do the training, like the FE colleges, the apprenticeship providers, the private providers and the colleges that I support, such as the technical colleges, can then adjust their curricula accordingly.

The second policy that is not in the Bill appeared on 1 January this year, when the Government issued a paper on technical qualifications. This was totally unexpected: there has been nothing in a White Paper and no research on it—I am very interested to know what they will do—but they set out their policy.

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[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

It can get worse, you know.

I am quoting from the documents so that they are on the record, so that when MPs see it they know I am not making this up. This is real stuff. Listen to this:

“We have recognised the need for additional qualifications alongside A levels and T Levels, including small qualifications designed to be taken as part of a study programme including A levels. However, we recognise that students who traditionally take”


things such as diplomas, two BTECs or extended diplomas

“tend to have achieved lower GCSE grades than their peers who progress onto A level study. They are also more likely to be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students, have SEND and have received free school meals.”

So the Government admit in this impact document that one of the consequences of this is that the following people will suffer: black, Asian and minority ethnic students, those with SEND and those who have received free meals. They will not actually have much of a chance of going to university. This is a disgraceful and shaming statement to put into any public document.

It gets worse: those from

“Asian and black ethnic backgrounds are more likely to be affected by the proposals, as they are particularly strongly represented on qualifications expected to no longer be available in the future.”

It then does disabled students and disability, with

“these students being more strongly negatively impacted by being unable to achieve level 3 in the reformed landscape.”

So disabled students are going to be disadvantaged in this reformed landscape. Scrap the blasted landscape! It is absolutely disgusting. Quite frankly, I am very ashamed that a Conservative Government have done this. What they are denying to lots of people—black, Asian, ethnic minority, disadvantaged and disabled students—is hope and aspiration.

The Conservative Party at the moment has been accused of abandoning lots of the things it has traditionally lived by. One of the things it has lived by is improvement in education. With respect to my own family, my grandfather left school at 12, and my father left elementary school at 16 and studied all sorts of other things to get on, leave and eventually become a senior civil servant. That is what Conservatives believe in—hope and aspiration—yet this denies hope and aspiration. As Browning said, the reach should exceed the grasp,

“Or what’s a heaven for?”

They are denied that reach. This is a shaming thing. I am very ashamed that a Conservative Government could do it, and all I can say to your Lordships is that I apologise for the Government.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I was going to say it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, but actually it is an extremely daunting task after that magnificent speech.

I shall speak to my Amendment 32 and add my support to Amendments 27, 28 and 33, to which I have added my name. But I support all the amendments in this group, which, as has been so powerfully set out by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, address a key concern over the Government’s policies on technical—or can I still say vocational?—qualifications.

I remind the House of my interests as a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation for which I worked for 20 years on practical, work-based technical and craft qualifications. BTEC broke away from City & Guilds in the 1970s, originally separating the business from the technical as BEC and TEC, but then coming together to offer both types of qualifications, particularly but not exclusively for secondary schools and further education colleges. Over nearly half a century, BTEC has built a reputation which is recognised, understood and valued—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, respected—by candidates, employers and academia.

It would be an act of extreme folly and damage for the Government to undermine, let alone cease to fund, a set of qualifications which have had a profound influence on the work skills of the country, especially, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, pointed out, for disadvantaged groups, and especially at a time when the country needs all the skills it can muster. We need skilled people to replace all the skilled workers which Brexit has seen return to their countries of origin. Do you know, I do not remember seeing that in the Leave campaign materials: “Vote Leave and be deprived of all the skilled workers you need.” We have shortages of farm workers, HGV drivers and butchers. My grandfather was a butcher. He had no problems in those far-off days in encouraging young people into an essential and respected trade.

Successive Governments’ relentless focus on universities and academia has led to a generation believing that actually doing things is less worthy than thinking things. We must urgently work to address the academic superiority which has so beset this nation for generations.

This Government have invented T-levels. Previous Governments, academically minded, have tried to invent different sorts of vocational qualifications. We had NVQs, which were going to be the vocational qualification to end all vocational qualifications—they were brilliant. We had GNVQs, we had CPVE. I looked after CPVE for a while. It was a brilliant secondary school practical programme. It was done away with by the academic superiority, who said that it lacked intellect. We had diplomas. They were all designed to break through this country’s unwillingness actually to do and make things. T-levels are untried and untested and will pose real problems, particularly, as has been mentioned, in the work element.

In proposing those shiny new toys, the Government chose to ignore City & Guilds and BTEC, with well over a century of expertise. They need now to put their weight behind those schemes which are proven and to encourage candidates to work with colleges and employers to fulfil their potential and fill the skilled jobs which are so crucial to the country’s well-being, indeed to its survival as a 21st-century force for good.

I support all the amendments in this group. Mine insists that the institution must publish specified criteria before it can withdraw funding, or approval, from an existing qualification. That of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, insists on public consultation; that of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, promotes the combination of academic and vocational education; and that of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, also calls for public consultation and the consent of employer representative bodies. On all sides of the House, we express concern that the Government’s blinkered support for their own invention threatens to undermine all that has been good and valuable in the past.

I wish the Minister well in her new post and hope that her own academic background will enable her to see just how important it is that we protect all that has been good and successful in the vocational field and support both BTEC and City & Guilds qualifications, which have been the bedrock of work-based skills for so long.

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Moved by

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

31: Clause 7, page 9, line 41, at end insert—
“(2A) But no student will be deprived of the right to take two BTECs, AGQ or a Diploma or an extended Diploma.”

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

That is all that is being asked for this afternoon: a short, defined delay, a consultation before defunding, and then we will get it right. As someone who got my qualifications at night school and day release, and who took a postgraduate certificate in teaching in post-16, and had three older sons who got their qualifications through further education, I say to all those, including the Minister: consult with the advisers and with your civil servants, and ask how many of them have anything like that understanding or life experience, and then they can tell me that I am wrong.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. It is right, and I echo completely his comments about T-levels. I am just as committed to T-levels as he is. They are an important and interesting innovation, and to show it, of the UTCs for which I am responsible, in the first year two have experimented with T-levels. They have been teaching them for the last 18 months and will know the results by August of this year. Last August, more UTCs implemented T-levels, so we are learning a great deal about them, though not enough.

The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would mean more time to consider whether they are living up to what we all hope that they will live up to. That is what it is all about. That is why, when we last debated this Bill, we asked that they should be delayed for four years. The Government listened—I recognise what the Minister and the Secretary of State said, which was, “No, we will delay defunding until 2024.” They were going to start gentle defunding this year with a little bit more next year. I do not know whether that will be cancelled, but the main defunding will be in 2024.

This means that we will only have two years of T-level results to judge. We will have the results in August 2022 of how many students—only a few hundred have taken them—got a distinction, a credit, a pass or a failure. In August 2023, there will be a few more hundred. That is very small evidence of whether they are working. T-levels will only succeed if two lots of people want them to succeed. The first is the students, and whether they recognise that this is a way in which they can get to university, improve their technical knowledge successfully and get a good job after that. The second is whether industry is satisfied that the level of education is what they expect their young employees to have.

Our experience of T-levels is that we had 10 starting the digital T-level 18 months ago at the Dartford UTC. Three dropped out because it was too demanding for them and too academic. We have discovered that students who only get 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 in GCSE will not be able to cope with T-levels, because 80% of a T-level is academic and only 20% is practical. The ones who can cope with T-levels will be those who in GSCE get 9, 8 and 7. Some who get 6 can cope; some cannot. Unquestionably, T-levels are trying to produce an officer class of highly skilled workers in technology.

However, you need more than an officer class. You need a large number of qualified technicians. It is rather like in the Army, where it is no good just having an officer class. You must have the level below them, the regimental sergeant-majors, the sergeant-majors, the lance-corporals and the corporals. These are the people who make the Army successful or not. BTECs have managed to train a lot of qualified technicians who do not particularly want to join the officer class, which is very interesting. You see this in levels 4 and 5—the two qualifications above level 3. Lots of people are now being encouraged to do these, people whom I would describe as “qualified technicians”. To give an example, if you live in London and have a plumbing problem, you have to ring up Pimlico Plumbers. A plumber will come very quickly and charge £80 an hour, which is £640 for a whole day. If someone has a qualification of 4 or 5 and is earning £640 in a day, they are not going to spend two years going on to level 6, the foundation degree. They are the qualified technicians which BTECs provide extensively throughout industry.

Perhaps the Minister can explain one of the problems. BTECs will be disqualified if they overlap, but what does overlap mean? There is no definition of “overlap”. It is very subjective. It is what you think may or may not overlap. To give an example, I have had a letter from an industrialist, whom I have never met, Benjamin Silverstone, a fellow at Warwick University and an expert in battery technology. He says:

“My concern is that a kid says, ‘I want to do my engineering T-level because in two years that job is going to be there’, but that T-level doesn’t fit them for it because there isn’t anything in there about battery technologies, electrification or power electronics.”


This is just one businessman, whom I have never met, but he is saying that T-levels look far too academic.

Therefore, I ask the Ministers seriously to compare the curriculum of T-levels with the curriculum of BTECs. We are doing that with digital at the Dartford UTC and finding out how they differ, and there are differences. We would say that in some areas they do not overlap, but that is a very subjective argument, and the Government may just say, “They do overlap”, so this is not a very satisfactory system. I hope that the Government will listen again on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and think again on how he is adding that one year back, meaning that they could have another year to decide more clearly which BTECs should be defunded.

My Amendment 16A is altogether quite an interesting argument. In the draft Bill, the Government said that BTECs will survive as single subjects in the future, but no student will be allowed to take two BTECs. This is an entirely original and unique thing to say in the history of education since the great Act of 1870. At no stage have any Government or Minister said that a student cannot take two qualifications that are funded and available. This has never happened before in our history, so why is it being done now? The Government have never justified this, and it is extraordinary.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Leave out “agree” and insert “disagree”

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the Motions in this group relate to provider access, universal credit, and SEND and further education teacher training. I will start with Commons Amendments 17 and 18, on strengthening the present provider access legislation, and Amendments 17A, B and C to the Motion in my name.

The Government have listened to and carefully considered the views expressed and concerns raised in this House and the other place. We agree that it is important that the number of mandatory provider encounters is balanced with the need for pupils to hear from a diverse range of people during each key phase of their education. That is why I am delighted to be able to propose a compromise amendment that offers young people that choice, related to students meeting providers of technical education and apprenticeships.

Our amendment would require schools to put on six provider encounters for pupils in years 8 to 13: two in each key phase, or an average of one per year over the course of a pupil’s secondary education. This should help to ensure that young people meet a greater breadth of providers and, crucially, should prevent schools simply arranging one provider meeting and turning down all other providers. The underpinning statutory guidance will include details of the full range of providers that we would expect all pupils to have the opportunity to meet during their time at secondary school. The Government intend to consult on this statutory guidance to ensure that the legislation works for schools, providers and, most importantly, young people.

I also want to take this opportunity to clarify that, although this amendment does not make specific reference to university technical colleges, the reference to “providers” in the amendment does cover UTCs. Strong UTCs are succeeding in equipping young people with vital skills, getting them into employment and supporting social mobility. It is right that, when there is a UTC in reasonable distance, it should be one of the providers that schools consider inviting to speak to their pupils.

I thank my noble friend Lord Baker for his work on this issue. In particular, I recognise the extraordinary work done by the right honourable Robert Halfon MP, chair of the Education Select Committee, and thank him for his tireless campaigning. I hope noble Lords will agree that this is a sensible compromise, with a middle ground of six provider encounters that will help to give every pupil information about what FE colleges, independent training providers, university technical colleges and other alternative providers can offer.

Amendments 17D and 17E in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, would require that provider encounters are in person and, further, that they begin in year 7 and that access is given over at least two weeks on each occasion. We agree that all young people need work experience and engagement with a range of employers to gain insights into the workplace. We also want young people to have access to personal guidance whenever they are making significant choices about the next step in their education or training. That is why we expect schools to follow the Gatsby benchmarks, which incorporate these activities as part of a high-quality careers programme for young people.

We are committed to ensuring that every provider encounter is of a high quality and meaningful for the student. We agree that it is sensible that provider encounters should be given in person where possible. However, writing this requirement into primary legislation is unnecessary. We have seen throughout the pandemic that there are times when it is not always appropriate for provision to be given in person. Technology may also have a role to play in bringing pupils a wider range of perspectives; for example, as part of the provider’s in-person presentation at school, it could incorporate a live link-up with some students at the provider or deliver a virtual tour. However, we agree that encounters should be in person where possible, and we propose making that expectation clear in the statutory guidance.

Secondly, we agree that “the earlier, the better” on careers guidance. That is why the Government support the Private Member’s Bill currently making its way through this House that sets out that career guidance begins at year 7. Pupils will get introduced to careers education in year 7 and will start learning about technical education options via the provider encounters from year 8. There is little demonstrable benefit in bringing the provider access clause forward to year 7, because pupils cannot act on this information then, whereas from year 8 onwards, there are clear choices for them to make in terms of the subsequent stages following their secondary education.

Finally, I cannot agree with the amendment that would require schools to provide access to pupils over a two-week period. This would be extremely burdensome on schools, which would struggle to accommodate that amount of time for providers in an already busy curriculum. We think the clause as it stands, saying schools should ensure a reasonable period of time during the school day, is sufficient and proportionate.

I turn to Commons Amendment 19 and Motions 19A and 19B. My noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and I had productive conversations—

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I just want to refer to the earlier amendment, for which I thank my noble friend very warmly. The original Baker clause had three meetings for each year group—13, 15 and 17—and the Government wanted one. It was a loophole. I had discussions with her and I thank her very much for the way in which she responded, moving to two meetings. It is a very good example of give and take. She is a member of a Ministry that likes to take but very seldom gives, but here the Government did listen to representations from this House. I thank her for agreeing to that and being sympathetic to it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his very kind words.

Returning to Amendment 19 and Motions 19A and 19B, as I was saying, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and I had productive conversations with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on these matters. I shall highlight some of the points raised in these discussions, although I am aware that the letters we wrote to the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord are in the Library of the House.

First, I note that Clause 17, removed by Amendment 19, would be significantly costly to implement. Initial estimates from DWP suggest the cost of ensuring that such claimants retain entitlement to universal credit could be between £250 million and £300 million per annum. While this House has rightly asked the Commons to consider this point, it is right that we do not continue to insist on policy that would increase public spending. It may help if I remind noble Lords that the core objective of universal credit is to support claimants to enter work, earn more or prepare for work in the future. Indeed, it is an important principle that universal credit does not duplicate the support provided by the student support system.

However, I reassure your Lordships that universal credit claimants are able to take on part-time training for any level of course, as long as they can meet their work requirements and their work coach is satisfied that it will help their employment chances. Furthermore, the Government understand that there should be some circumstances in which people are allowed to continue to claim universal credit while doing full-time training. That is why universal credit claimants may undertake a full-time course of non-advanced study or training for up to eight weeks in order to support their employment and career goals. Additionally, as part of DWP Train and Progress, there is a further extension in the flexibility offered by universal credit conditionality. This extension means that, with the agreement of their work coach, adults who claim universal credit can undertake non-advanced work-related full-time training for up to 16 weeks without losing their entitlement to universal credit. The flexibility will last until at least April 2023.

Finally, exceptions for full-time study or training at any level are also made for students with additional needs that are not met through the student support system, such as those responsible for a child or claimants who have been assessed as having limited capability for work due to disability or ill health. This additional flexibility has been introduced in recognition of the benefit a course of study or training could have in enabling claimants with disabilities to improve their prospects of obtaining work. Officials at the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions will also continue to work closely together to help address and mitigate the barriers to unemployed adults taking advantage of our skills offers. For example, both departments are working to ensure that local jobcentre leads are actively involved in and help inform the design of local skills provision through skills advisory panels and the local skills improvement plans.

Moreover, the recently announced employment and skills pathfinders are a joint DWP/DfE initiative, working in collaboration with local partners, to examine how our national interventions could be improved by aligning the delivery of employment and skills at a local level. The employment and skills advisory pathfinders will share all their learnings with the LSIPs, as I mentioned, but also with the mayoral combined authorities and other local programmes, so they have an opportunity to learn from them too. More broadly, in relation to how we are learning from these programmes, the Department for Education is setting up a new unit for future skills which will work with BEIS and DWP to bring together the skills, data and information we hold across government to enable us to use central and local government, as well as providers and the general public. The unit will produce information on local skills demand, the future skills needs of business, the skills available in an area and the pathways between training and jobs. This will obviously also be relevant to those looking for work.

Turning to Commons Amendment 21 and Motion 21B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, we all agree that it is vital for our teachers across all stages, from early years to school and further education, to be trained to identify and respond to the needs of all their learners, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, who has been a voice for learners with special educational needs and disabilities throughout the debates on this Bill, and more broadly in the House. However, as indicated by Commons Amendment 21, we do not believe it is helpful to prescribe requirements relating to the content of further education initial teacher training in primary legislation, and we do not agree, in response to the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, that the content of occupational standards should be cemented into legislation.

I want first to address our shared commitment to ensuring that all learners, including learners with special educational needs and disabilities, have access to a world-class education that sets them up for life and supports them to achieve positive outcomes. This starts from the earliest stages, which is why, as part of the early years recovery programme, we are establishing a training contract to increase the number of qualified SENCOs working in early years settings by up to 5,000 between September 2022 and August 2024.

In addition, we recently announced a package of over £45 million for SEND, to be delivered over the next three financial years. This includes direct support to schools and colleges to support the workforce in meeting the needs of learners with special educational needs and disabilities. The forthcoming SEND review will aim to ensure that children and young people with SEND get the educational, health and care support they need, identified early, delivered promptly and in settings that are best suited to their needs.

On the content of FE initial teacher training programmes, it is right that teaching professionals in the sector decide how teacher training should be designed and delivered. We supported a group of experts who employ teachers in the FE sector—from colleges and training providers, whose staff have real insight into the needs of their learners—to develop the new occupational standard for learning and skills teachers, which was published in September 2021.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on tabling this amendment because it has helped to shift the Government’s thinking on T-levels. When they were originally announced in July 2021, it looked as though there was going to be a war between BTECs and T-levels. I never accepted that, because T-levels will survive as an important choice at 18 for students who want to take them. I am quite convinced of that. To show my confidence in them, of the university technical colleges for which I am responsible, two have been teaching T-levels in construction and skills for the past 18 months and another seven joined them in September last year.

Since the Bill was first debated, the attitude of the Government has moved. I read only a few minutes ago the letter from the Secretary of State, large parts of which the Minister, who has been very helpful in this matter, repeated. BTECs will still be needed in the future because over 200,000 are taken by students each year. I was very glad that the Minister said that the views of employers would be taken more into account, because three large manufacturers, JCB, Rolls-Royce and Toyota, have approached the Government and said that BTECs should run alongside T-levels until students decide whether they want to take them or not.

The real success of T-levels will be if students actually want to take the exam and see it as a way to get into university. Many of them will do that but, on the other hand, lots of students will not want to take them. We found in the two experiments that we were engaged in that students who get grades 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 in GCSEs are reluctant to handle T-levels as they are really above their capability. But they also want a technical way of getting to level 3; that is very important. AGQs, which the Minister mentioned, and BTECs do that. She did not actually mention the national diploma and the extended national diploma, but I hope they will be carefully considered by the Minister. That is how many people, particularly black and ethnic-minority students, get into a university.

I hope that this is a genuine change in the attitude of the Government towards BTECs. They are an important part of the educational process of our system. As I have said before, hundreds of thousands are taken each year. The letter from the Secretary of State is reassuring, but we will know only when we see the results of T-levels. We will have the first results of T-levels from a few hundred schools this August, more in August next year and more in August the following year before any BTECs are defunded. Then the House will have the opportunity to see whether the pledges given today by the Ministers are being fully implemented.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister and the Government for listening to our concerns. It was good to get the letter from the Secretary of State, although only this morning, which was cutting things a little fine. However, we appreciated the meeting with the Minister yesterday, which gave us a whole day to absorb what was planned. In this place, we have to listen and think rather rapidly.

Anyway, we felt very strongly, as the Minister knows, that defunding BTECs when T-levels were untried and untested could spell disaster for students wishing to learn practical, work-based skills. We constantly pointed out that BTECs are well understood and respected by employers, by academia and, perhaps as important, by parents. It is a benefit that they can be combined with A-levels, which T-levels cannot, giving additional opportunities to students in their choices.

We will continue to try to ensure that schools celebrate their BTEC and apprenticeship leavers with the same enthusiasm as their university entrants. Until the Government amend their highly academic criteria for schools, that may be a pipe dream, but there is hope that young people are increasingly looking at the high cost of university, the absence of social life during Covid—no getting drunk in the pubs, although that is mercifully coming back again—and considering that learning and earning is a better alternative than learning and being in debt.