Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I was saying—with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Storey—that heads are ingenious at finding a way round things if they do not want something to happen. I understand the intention of publishing a policy statement about the ability of providers to come into schools, but I am concerned about whether you can really make it happen in practice if heads do not want it to. This is where our amendment comes in and where the Government—in the end—have to take ownership of it. The Minister has already promised a strategy but we need to hear that there is going to be some beef to it.

We also need some recognition on why schools should be reluctant. I am interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said. If students are leaving at 14 to go to UTCs, clearly we want bright young people to do that where it is appropriate. We do not want schools resisting or offloading the students that they do not want to stay in their own schools. That has been a problem with some UTCs. Equally, you have to accept, if you are a head, that losing young people means a financial loss. The Department for Education needs to think about a sensible approach that will provide some incentive to schools to encourage young people to go to UTCs at that age if they think it is appropriate. It would be a great pity if the UTC approach went under because parents and young people are not getting the right information about what UTCs have to offer. That is but one example of the issues that we face.

Amendment 9 takes its remit from the industrial strategy Green Paper recently published by the Government. Page 43 of Building Our Industrial Strategy talks about the creation of a course-finding process for technical education similar to the UCAS process. That is very welcome. I see this as being in parallel to impartial advice and encouragement of young people into the apprenticeship approach. The strategy says:

“Effective information and support should be available for everyone, regardless of their education and training choices. People choosing apprenticeships or courses in colleges currently face significant complexity when selecting and applying for a course. Applications for higher education institutions, in contrast, are much more straightforward, with a way of searching and applying for courses similar to the UCAS process”.


The Government say they will explore how to give technical education students clear information and better support throughout the application process, with a similar platform to UCAS. This is very welcome and my amendment merely provides a useful vehicle for the Government to establish this and I am sure the Minister is going to accept it. I beg to move.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Amendment 11 is also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. It is very important that when one is proposing a significant change, which is what the amendment does, one should seek to get all-party support for it because that will secure acceptance across the party lines. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that providers of technical training and apprenticeships will have the right to go into local schools and explain to students at different levels and of different ages exactly what they have to offer. The ages will be 13, 16 and 18.

The key to the success of the Bill is not only providing first-class apprenticeships and technical education routes but ensuring that young people recognise them as worthy career paths. The curse of our education system at the moment is that secondary schools or comprehensives seem to have only one target: three A-levels and university. You go and speak to heads and they will tell you about the students who have got into university and the ones they want to get into university, and for the rest it is middle-distance interest, frankly. There are many pathways to success and it is our duty to try to open them to more people. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, we cannot expect teachers, many of whom have no experience of industry or commerce, to advise their students. They have simply left school, gone to a teacher training college and gone into education, and they do not realise the enormous range of skills and interests that is needed in the industrial and commercial world.

The amendment will strengthen the Bill significantly by giving all young people the chance to hear directly from providers of apprenticeships and technical qualifications about what they can study. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the phrase in the amendment that covers FE colleges is “education … providers”, as referred to in subsection (1) of proposed new Section 42B. So FE colleges are included in the amendment. This will help our young people make better-informed and more confident decisions at important transition points.

The age of 14 has become a transition point because university technical colleges have now been promoted for some time. I am one of those who believe that that is a much better transition point than 11. The reason we have 11 is because in Victorian England the school leaving age was 11 and the only schools that went beyond that were grammar schools. After the great 1870 Act the elementary schools started the post-school leaving age and it happened to be 11. That is why we are landed with 11-to-18 and 11-to-16 schools. I personally believe that the two ages of transfer in the education system are round about nine and 13 or 14, which is what the private sector does and what many other countries in the world do.

Of course, having the transition at 14 presents marketing difficulties because youngsters, having gone to an 11-to-16 or 11-to-18 school, do not expect to make another choice until they take GCSEs. Certainly, UTCs have had difficulty recruiting at 14. It gets better each year as the UTC movement expands and gets better and more widely known, but as the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, said, many schools resist anybody who comes in and tries to persuade a pupil to go on another course. It is a loss of money—about £5,000 a head—and they are very hostile.

We had one classic case when the head of a UTC went to a school to explain to the students what the UTC was about. He was met at the door by a teacher who said, “You can go over there to the 16 year-olds”. The head said, “Yes, but what about the 13 and 14 year-olds?”. The teacher said, “You can’t go to those at all”. The head said, “What is your role in this school?”, and he said, “I am the careers adviser”. You can see an instinctive and permanent hostility to anything that will attract students to a different course—which in many cases may be more appropriate for them.

For the past three years, we have been pressing the Government to help us with recruitment at 14. We asked for two changes to be made, both of which required legislation. The simpler one involved laying a statutory instrument, which was laid and has now come into force. It requires all local authorities in the land to write to all year 9 parents telling them of the existence of choice at 14 and, specifically, that UTCs, studio schools and indeed FE colleges are available for them. We really did not get very far until Justine Greening became the Education Secretary; she is the first in seven years who actually likes UTCs. She visited one in Didcot and described it as brilliant and, when I took her to open another in Scarborough, she said that it was also brilliant. Last week she went to see JCB—also brilliant. So the mood in the department changed, and a statutory instrument was laid.

The other change we wanted is contained in this amendment. Legislative action was needed—there was no general education Bill in this Parliament. When I saw the Long Title of this Bill, I asked the Public Bill Office whether it would be appropriate to table an amendment, and outlined what I wanted. The office said that it would be. An excellent clerk, Susannah Street, not only said yes but presented me with a brilliant amendment—five lines long—which was absolutely perfect and did everything I wanted. Then of course I showed it to the Minister and the department. They liked it and redrafted it to a page and half, which only goes to show that the parliamentary draftsmen in the department today are just as good as they were when I was there more than 30 years ago. The drafting is very clear. Subsection (1) of the proposed new section states that:

“The proprietor of a school in England”—


which covers all schools in England, but not private schools—

“must ensure that there is an opportunity for a range of education and training providers”—

including university technical colleges, studio schools, career colleges, FE colleges and providers of apprenticeships—

“to access registered pupils during the relevant phase of their education”.

This is really at the heart of the clause.

By this, we wanted to achieve a recognition of the importance of technical and vocational education. As one knows, for the better part of 150 years, it has never had the same sort of rating as academic education in England does. This is a great pity. When we started the UTC movement, we asked a team at Exeter University to explain to us in a report why every attempt to improve technical education since 1870 had failed—and every attempt had failed. At the end of that presentation, we were told that there were two that would be approved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and we had to decide whether to have two experimental schools or a movement. If we had accepted just two experimental schools, I would have thought that, by this time, we would probably have half a dozen UTCs operating. Ron Dearing and I decided no, and that we should start as many as we could as quickly as we could—all with the approval of the department, I must say. We do not just turn them on. There is a very demanding process of selection, as the noble Lord, Lord Nash, will know: we have to persuade him that they are in fact worth funding. We now have some 48 UTCs open, with nearly 12,000 students.

One thing we are most proud of in the UTC movement is the destination of the students. The destination data for students in ordinary secondary schools are farcical—the students are tracked 18 months after they have left, through national insurance numbers and tax records. When the figures are published, no one pays any attention to them, including the heads of the schools, and they disappear into the distance. Our destination data are taken in the four months of July, August, September and October. We trace what happens to each of the students; it is not too difficult for us because, from the very beginning when students join the UTCs, they are thinking about what their destination is going to be. That is a very thorough and proper analysis.

Last July we had 1,292 leavers and of those only five were NEET. Literally no other group of schools in the country can match that. Our unemployment rate at the age of 18 is 0.5%, while the student unemployment rate in this country is 11.5%—something that is often forgotten. When it comes to the destination of our students, 44% go to university, which is higher than the English national average of 38%, and we also produce 30% of apprentices at 18 years old where the national average is 8.6%. That is a remarkable record of achievement for UTCs.

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The Minister sent us a very helpful letter today. He then set out the responsibilities of the different agencies. We will come back to this: it is very clunky and it is very difficult to see, in the end, who is the person to whom the Minister turns to sort it all out. My concern is about this, but also a response to my noble friend Lord Knight’s speech: if we have this great clunky apparatus trying to deal with a legacy of failure over many years, how on earth will we be able to respond quickly to the kinds of challenges we face? Fortunately, my noble friend Lord Knight will table an amendment, I hope, on Report which will help us set that out. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Before the amendment is withdrawn, I thank everybody who spoke in this debate for the support they have given my amendment. I also thank the Minister because we have been dealing with UTCs together for nearly four years and he has seen the successes and also the problems we have. This clause helps very much with our big problems of recruitment. I thank the clerk who did the five-liner. Her name is Susannah Street and she is a star.

I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who is not here, that every word of the clause is needed because the clause is going to be met with great hostility in every school in the country. They are going to be required, by September, to produce a policy for implementing a right for people to come and tell them about other competitive sources of learning and training. It will require all the resources of the department and the powers of the Secretary of State to ensure that this happens, so that in September and October of this year we should have providers going into all the schools. It is not an easy pathway but it has the full support of the Government and I welcome that very much.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I hope that this group of amendments will take rather less time than the previous group.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Have we passed Amendment 11?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We will pass Amendment 11 when we come to it.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Yes, of course. I am anticipating—sorry. I will have to wait.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

The noble Lord, Lord Baker is, of course, a novice at these procedures; or perhaps, like me, he is still getting his breath back following the words “I accept” from the Minister, which were much welcomed.

This is a probing amendment and, to some extent, a read-across from the Higher Education and Research Bill. It is pretty much self-explanatory, although that does not mean I can resist the temptation to say a few words. Almost three decades have passed since the Education Reform Act 1988 ended the tenure that had long been enjoyed by British academics, but an amendment to that legislation protected in law the freedom of academics to question and test received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial and occasionally unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or the privileges they may have had at their institution. That right that should apply across the board to all academics, whether in higher or further education. I accept that this is an issue of more concern in higher education, but increasing staff insecurity in further education colleges and other further education providers leads us to believe that the principles that apply in higher education should also apply in further education.

The Minister may well say that academic freedom is already established by common practice, but that is not the view of teaching organisations. This amendment applies to the Secretary of State in issuing guidance and directions, and to the institution in performing its functions, giving them a duty to uphold the principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. It is not a draconian measure; it merely states unequivocally that institutions have the right to determine which courses to teach and who they appoint to teach them, and that academic staff have the right to speak freely about how their institution is run, what courses should be pursued and how, and to advance unconventional or perhaps unpopular opinions. Such expressions should not impact on the job security of academic staff, and for that reason we believe they have the right to have such protections clearly set out in the Bill.

Amendment 3 would also incorporate the human rights to freedom of expression, assembly, thought and belief. It is unfortunate that this amendment is necessary but, given the threats felt by universities as a result of the dramatic changes being introduced to the sector by the Higher Education and Research Bill, who is to say that providers in the further education sector will not sooner or later experience a similar feeling of threat? Forewarned is forearmed, which is why this issue must at least be highlighted today.

Freedom of speech is the subject of Amendment 7. It, too, is a provision that ought not to be necessary, but the hard facts are that it is necessary. Recent events, particularly in some educational institutions involving Jewish students or staff, demonstrate that for some people freedom of speech can and does become unlawful speech. My view on this goes back to my days as a student activist, some four decades ago, and is that a demand to no-platform a particular speaker is wrong. I have never believed that you deny someone a platform simply because you disagree with them. Even if you disagree vehemently with what they are saying, my response is that you should take them on by argument, but when that kind of speech enters the world of racism, misogyny, homophobia or threatening behaviour, it contravenes the law, and the law should intervene.

It is unfortunate that these matters have to be aired, but I believe they should be. They are matters of concern in the further education sector as well as the higher education sector. I hope the Minister will take them on board and given them due consideration. I beg to move.

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We are not starting from scratch. The country has a long and miserable history of downrating practical achievement, and we welcome anything the Bill can do to reverse this and give vocational skills the credit they richly deserve. The Government need to consult and take account of experienced stakeholders who have so much to offer and could advise on making the Bill a success.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I find these amendments very interesting because they pose the question of what sort of beast we are creating in the Institute for Apprenticeships. The points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, exactly address that. In the Institute for Apprenticeships we have created a body with clear functions. It has to sort out shoddy apprenticeships and try to bring some sense to the maze of technical qualifications. They are very important jobs, but they are essentially administrative, functional jobs. Surely the Institute for Apprenticeships will not be spending government money in the future; it will be spending money provided by industry and commerce. Therefore, the Government should really take a back seat from then on. They should be concentrating on what they are responsible for—the skills gap. They have to devise policies that close the skills gap. The improved apprenticeship system will do a great deal towards that, but it cannot do it alone. Closing the skills gap also needs major reforms in further education colleges to improve their effectiveness. If they had been as good as they think they are, we would not have as big a skills gap as we do at the moment.

The Government’s other responsibility is to try to ensure how our education system can improve technical education, which in fact it is destroying in schools at the moment. Those are policy matters and the main policy of the Government in this regard is what they can do to close the skills gap.

Where does that leave the Institute for Apprenticeships? It leaves it as a much more independent body. It is not spending government money. The question that the Government should be asking the Institute for Apprenticeships is: what contribution are you making to closing the skills gap? They should not therefore interfere with the institute apart from that, in my opinion. The eight directors appointed so far are quite a feisty lot of independent people. The institute should become the main policy area for apprenticeships and should do the sort of things indicated in the Liberal amendment.

This is a very different body, I suspect, from the one the Government think they are setting up. They still want to keep their sticky fingers on the Institute for Apprenticeships even though they are not providing the money. The money is being provided by industry and commerce—by business. The steering wheel should be taken away from them, and the Institute for Apprenticeships should become an important body, reviewing each year whether the whole apprenticeship system is right. It should decide whether apprenticeships should start at 14, not the Government—which I happen to support. It should decide about approving new providers, the terms for which are set out in Clause 6, and I am sure it would do it in a very professional way.

This is quite an interesting group of amendments, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply. This is an area that should slip away from immediate government control because the Government are not putting up the money.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend has said. The Government are creating a very powerful body. It will own the intellectual property in all the technical qualifications for the routes described in the Bill. There will be no other institution with any long-term interest in evolving or maintaining those qualifications or in developing a name and a reputation that parents and others can rely on. Below the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, we have a series of short-term contracts. City & Guilds—I sit on its council, which everyone knows is nothing, but at least indicates affection—will disappear at this level. There will be no City & Guilds qualifications; they will become qualifications of the institute for apprenticeships. City & Guilds, being a charity, may bid for a seven-year contract to be an awarding organisation or to look after one or two of the routes, but it will not be awarding City & Guilds qualifications, rather it will just provide a function for the institute.

We are creating something much closer to the German model. We are losing what remains of the lodestars that the British Computer Society, City & Guilds and others have been providing in terms of the name and quality of their qualifications and replacing them with a new structure. This structure needs to be more powerful and conscious of its role than it is described as being in the Bill. I would like to see the Government follow the logic of what they have produced in the Bill and create a creature which is capable of the long-term responsibilities being placed upon it. It may be that the Government need to acquire City & Guilds, which is after all a quasi-government organisation anyway. Perhaps they need to take it on board to provide the strength, history, continuity and the people needed to run the sort of thing that is being set up in the Bill, or at least to provide the engine for it. I do not see how dispensing with all that the good awarding bodies have created and providing a structure which does not have the power to do what is necessary is a safe way of proceeding with a very important part of our education system.

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Moved by

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

11: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Information about technical education: access to English schools
(1) The Education Act 1997 is amended as follows.(2) After section 42A insert—“42B Information about technical education: access to English schools (1) The proprietor of a school in England within subsection (2) must ensure that there is an opportunity for a range of education and training providers to access registered pupils during the relevant phase of their education for the purpose of informing them about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships.(2) A school is within this subsection if it provides secondary education and is one of the following—(a) an Academy;(b) an alternative provision Academy;(c) a community, foundation or voluntary school;(d) a community or foundation special school (other than one established in a hospital);(e) a pupil referral unit.(3) The proprietor of a school in England within subsection (2) must prepare a policy statement setting out the circumstances in which education and training providers will be given access to registered pupils for the purpose of informing them about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships.(4) The proprietor must ensure that the policy statement is followed.(5) The policy statement must include— (a) any procedural requirements in relation to requests for access;(b) grounds for granting and refusing requests for access;(c) details of premises or facilities to be provided to a person who is given access. (6) The proprietor may revise the policy statement from time to time.(7) The proprietor must publish the policy statement and any revised statement.(8) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision supplementing subsection (1), for example provision about who is to be given access to pupils, to which pupils they are to be given access and how and when.(9) For the purposes of this section the relevant phase of a pupil’s education is the period—(a) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 13, and(b) ending with the expiry of the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 18. (10) In this section “approved technical education qualification” means a qualification approved under section A2DA of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.”(3) In section 42A (provision of careers guidance in schools in England), in subsection (7), omit the definition of “apprenticeship” (which has become outdated).(4) In section 45A (guidance as to discharge of duties: schools in England), in subsection (2), for “42A(1) or (4)” substitute “section 42A(1) or (4) or 42B”.(5) In section 46 (extension or modification of provisions of sections 43 to 45), in subsection (1)—(a) after “42A,” insert “42B,”;(b) after “42A(6),” insert “42B (9)”.”