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.