Vocational Education

Lord Colwyn Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for initiating this debate. Vocational pedagogy is an issue seldom discussed in your Lordships’ House, but it is a legitimate area of concern for both the House and the country.

I declare an interest—a number of interests have been declared in this debate—in having been associated professionally for more than 20 years with City & Guilds, and it was the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development that produced the report under debate. It is clear from reading How to Teach Vocational Education that the institute maintains its standards of expertise and insight in relation to vocational teaching and assessment. It has been tremendous this afternoon to hear people coming from all sorts of backgrounds talking with the same enthusiasm and passion for vocational education.

I can assure my noble friend Lord Lucas that the Government welcome the report and the evidence that it provides to inform the work of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning. The Government are not alone in this. Both the Institute for Learning and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service have also applauded the report as a valuable contribution to work on this theme. As the originator of the Good Schools Guide, my noble friend Lord Lucas is fully aware of how fundamental standards of teaching are to eventual learning outcomes. What constitutes good and effective school teaching is, rightly, a topic to which your Lordships’ attention is frequently drawn and on which this House can boast substantial expertise. However, too little attention has been paid both in government and in the education sector as a whole to the quality of the education and training offered to young people and adults after compulsory school age.

Teaching adults and teaching vocational subjects call for different skills and present different challenges from those required in school classrooms. For example, learners’ ages may vary from 14 to over 90. The experience they bring with them may be as a complete beginner in the subject, as someone working towards a first step on the career ladder or as someone who may have worked in an area for years and is looking for the certification required for career enhancement. They may also want to learn for personal satisfaction, and that, too, is worth while. The task of teaching children successfully is hard enough, but the range of variables with which teachers of adults must cope potentially extends so much more widely. They tend to be better disciplined, which I suppose is one of the advantages of teaching adults, and their motivation tends to be higher than for those still of compulsory school age.

Two key factors have a bearing on the quality of the results that vocational education produces. First, there is the standard of qualifications to which it leads and the degree of confidence that employers have in those qualifications. My noble friend Lord Lingfield mentioned the importance of benchmark qualifications and the ease of understanding quite what the qualifications represent. City & Guilds, as befits an organisation founded by the livery companies and the Corporation of the City of London, has been delivering these since 1878. In the aftermath of the Wolf review, this Government have sought more and better ways to encourage more employers to become involved in the design and delivery of vocational qualifications as a guarantee of quality and workplace relevance. The noble Lord, Lord Young, gave a telling example of the local painter invigorating a class of people who were learning that craft.

Secondly, and equally crucially, there are standards of teaching and learning. For this, we look largely to the commitment and expertise of the further education sector. I echo the views of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, and those expressed by other noble Lords, and I pay tribute to the dedication of governors, leaders and, of course, teachers. On the comment that my noble friend Lord Lucas made about FE colleges, my understanding is that 66% of colleges are currently judged as good or better and that around 13% hold an outstanding grade, which is encouraging.

As the report makes quite clear, the sector has successfully adapted its methods to the subject in hand and to the diverse characteristics and aspirations of learners. Success depends not on new orthodoxy or dogma but on awareness and creativity. FE has responded, for example, to the way that e-learning has grown in recent years—as my noble friend Lady Sharp set out clearly—in recognition of the technology-dependent lifestyles of today, especially among the younger generation.

The previous Government took welcome steps to guarantee the quality of adult learning. I acknowledge the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Young, to the developments and progress made during that time. The coalition Government are building on that but, equally, we are trying to tackle the bureaucracy. We believe that one of the most useful sources of expertise is to be found among teachers and so, rather than impose central targets, the Government’s most effective role is to help the sector to identify and share good practice wherever it exists. We can see from the report that those directly involved in further education, individual learners and their eventual employers will all be the beneficiaries of high-quality teaching leading to high-value qualifications.

As noble Lords will know, the Government announced in December 2011 that they would establish a new Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning under the chairmanship of a distinguished college principal, Mr Frank McLoughlin CBE. My noble friend Lady Sharp made reference to this. Input to the review came from a wide range of sources, including this valuable report and, crucially, real-life observation of adults learning.

The main findings, influenced by this City & Guilds research, concluded that vocational education and training programmes should be characterised by learning with a clear line of sight to work, and that specialist vocational teachers and trainers should be at the heart of this system. To ensure that knowledge and skills are always current, strong links with employers should be maintained and further developed. In connection with this, following the review of professionalism of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, the Government are developing new professional qualifications for the FE workforce, and the new FE guild will take that forward.

Ofsted’s new inspection regime has a greater focus on the quality of teaching and teachers—my noble friend Lady Sharp referred to this—and will report on the contributions of colleges to their communities. As to teachers with dual professionalism, which the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, highlighted, the commission sees this as a fundamental element of the future development of the FE workforce. Its recommendations advocate equal focus on developing teaching and ongoing professional skills. It has long been one of the strengths of the further education sector that the practitioners were also frequently the teachers, and that brought reality and relevance to their teaching of students.

The commission will also set out the standard for what an adult vocational learner should expect and define a range of effective pedagogical approaches that make full use of the potential of technology—because, of course, technology has made an enormous difference in life.

On the points made by my noble friend Lord Addington, I recognise his concern about the requirement for people with any form of learning disability or disadvantage to be allowed to reach their full potential without any barriers which particular forms of assessment may present. I assure him that this is constantly under review. Ofqual is in regular contact with disability interest groups, to which I pay due tribute for the expertise and passion they bring to ensure that the groups they represent are not unnecessarily disadvantaged by things which could be removed.

Ofqual is looking very closely at the different methodologies for assessment. My noble friend—I know of his particular interest in dyslexia—mentioned the different ways, such as computer aids and software applications, which can enable learners to demonstrate that they can attain the standards of the qualification, albeit by a somewhat different method of assessment. The awarding bodies and, of course, the colleges have to maintain an interest in the qualifications, when they are awarded, representing a pure standard of achievement. A great deal of work is going on—and my noble friend deserves thanks for the way in which he champions disadvantage—to try to make absolutely sure that these different methods can be brought in. Many colleges already have strategies and technologies to support learners with special needs. We expect that some of the results coming out of the commission will address this, and we will have further information to support that. The websites of the Government, of Ofqual and, indeed, of the awarding bodies are available. My noble friend mentioned particularly City & Guilds. I know that all the awarding bodies have an interest in ensuring that special educational needs are met. I am sorry that he has found difficulties dealing with that, and we hope to take forward any specific cases that he can bring forward to try to ensure that those are fully addressed.

My noble friend also mentioned the importance of coaching. The other volume that comes with this report is The Role of Coaching in Vocational Education and Training, and we know how vital that is. It is always good to have a reference back to the Olympics and Paralympics in any debate, so why not in this one?

An interim report was published last December. Consultation on the commission’s conclusions is now nearing its end, with the final report due towards the end of March. The Government will look forward to considering that report and responding to it in due course, bearing in mind, of course, the development of the FE guild. With the interest in this subject around your Lordships’ House, that response may well provide an opportunity for the House to return to this vital subject at a later stage.

In closing, I again thank my noble friend for initiating a debate on this instructive report, and I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. They have brought a wide range of expertise and enthusiasm to this subject and have made incisive and informed contributions.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)]

My Lords, that completes the Grand Committee business for this afternoon.

Committee adjourned at 4.52 pm.