School Funding: Special Educational Needs

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Having a highly skilled teacher to work with, combined with the assistive technology to which the noble Lord referred, is the critical part. That is one of the reasons that Huawei has worked with the sector: to reform the training not just for SENCOs but for those on their initial teacher training and early career frameworks to support children in mainstream education.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the wonderful job that she has done at the Dispatch Box. I also congratulate her on her patience in listening to questions from Members of the Opposition demanding more resources, when, as a party, it is not prepared to commit itself to a single cent of extra expenditure.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is very kind—

Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government share the noble Baroness’s commitment to making sure that disadvantaged students can access higher education. As the noble Baroness and the House know, our perspective is that there are opportunities at different levels of jobs, such as levels 4, 5 and 6—namely, undergraduate level. We have also put an enormous emphasis on degree apprenticeships so that loans should not be a barrier to access and, as the House knows, we will be introducing the lifelong loan entitlement, which will also unlock potential from those who do not currently access higher education.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I benefited from a free education and a grant at St Andrews University. Today I would not have a hope of getting into St Andrews University because, while they are free of tuition fees, there is insufficient funding. The result is that children from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot get a place at Scottish universities. The universities have responded to the lack of income from fees by bringing in lots of international students. This is a disgrace, and if the situation in England is bad, north of the border—under the SNP—it is extremely worse.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have to agree with my noble friend. The figures are very different in Scotland. I mentioned that 85% of undergraduates in England are UK students. In Scotland, that figure is only 66% and has declined from 73% over the last five years.

Children’s Care Homes: Private Equity

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

There are just under 8,000 children in children’s homes, about 57,000 children in foster care and just under 7,000 children in either secure placements or independent supported accommodation.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, this attack on the private sector is extraordinary, is it not? Local authorities are desperate for capital and the resources to provide for children, yet the private sector, which is providing that capital, is under attack. Surely the alternative is that there will not be the resources needed for children.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend pointed to a more fundamental question, namely: why have local authorities and charities, which used to provide these services, stepped back in a world where the private sector can make a decent return on them?

Teacher Shortages

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am aware that the Secretary of State has apologised for her remarks. Working closely with her and my right honourable friend the Minister for School Standards, I can absolutely assure the House that we barely have a conversation where we do not express our gratitude to teachers and school leaders. We take workload very seriously and are continuing to work with the unions on that following the pay agreement.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, on the subject of intemperate behaviour, does my noble friend share my disgust that the Labour Party put out a message that the Prime Minister did not care about the safety of our children in schools? On issues such as the ones she has dealt with so well, we do not need people making party political points.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think the serious point here is that there is a serious situation in the handful of schools where we have had to intervene on the concrete. Of course, it could not be more inaccurate and unhelpful to criticise the Prime Minister personally in this regard.

Teacher Training: Dyslexia and Autism

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know that the noble Baroness is a former teacher, so she brings professional insight to this. We had very serious expert panels, including educational experts, on special educational needs and disabilities, both for the core content framework and the reform of initial teacher training. All of them were clear that trainees need to be able to teach everyone, and one of the great skills of a teacher is being adaptive. There also needs to be a pathway to experts in a school, and that is where the SENCO comes in.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I have a family member who is affected by autism and dyslexia. Does my noble friend agree that one of the problems is that before people can get support in the schools, they need a diagnosis, and getting a diagnosis is extremely difficult and takes a very long time? What are we going to do about that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend that early, accurate and effective identification is critical, but schools and colleges are permitted to put in place support for children where they have identified a need, without needing to wait for a formal diagnosis.

International Higher Education Students

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend care to reflect on the fact that in Scotland, which has St Andrews as the oldest university, the failure of the Scottish Government to have tuition fees for Scottish students has meant that there are no places for Scottish students, and the universities are having to raise the money by having more international students, at the expense of youngsters in Scotland?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot really comment on the experience of youngsters in Scotland. I can say that, from our perspective in England, we believe that the presence of international students is a great source of soft power for the nation—both those in our universities here and the more than 500,000 students who study in British universities overseas.

Education: Philosophy

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am absolutely delighted to add my support. The evidence on the value of oracy beyond simply public speaking is all important and very clear, and the department is working on it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Following the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, should we not have more philosophers in this House, if for no other reason than we would be better at explaining why we exist?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Having once had the pleasure of having tea with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, I know that she is in another league in her ability to explain these complex things, but having a multidisciplinary House is probably a strong basis.

Capita: Turing Scheme Contract

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right to pick me up on not having acknowledged the British Council’s role in the set-up of the scheme. We are very grateful to it, as we are for the way that it and the new provider are working together to ensure a seamless transition. The international network is less relevant to this contract because it is about grant administration. It is up to the institutions participating in the scheme to make those international links.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend not astonished that many of the people now carping about how the scheme is run, even though it has delivered two-and-a-half times more people, were not so long ago telling us that if Erasmus disappeared there would be no opportunities at all? Does she not get a bit tired of those people still fighting old battles?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot comment on my noble friend’s final point but it is important that we look at the data and the evidence of what happens. As my noble friend has pointed out, the evidence is extremely encouraging.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, described as the first half of Amendment 50, but I am rather less comfortable about the approach taken in the second half, requiring any employer receiving apprenticeship funding to spend at least two-thirds of it on people under 25 beginning apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3. That is an aim I entirely support, but I am not convinced that putting the onus wholly on employers to deliver it is the right way of going about it.

One of the concerns employers have regularly expressed about the current apprenticeship system is its lack of flexibility. This amendment would not only reduce the flexibility available to employers but impose extra requirements on them to manage their apprenticeship programmes and an extra level of bureaucracy resulting from the process of enforcing the requirements.

Employers already find it difficult to spend their levy funds, which is why so many apprenticeships go to reskilling and upskilling existing employees. The energy and utilities sector, which has a very good record of employing apprentices, has managed to spend on average only 54% of the levy funding available to it, so it is not as if there is not more money available. All that they do not spend just goes back to the Treasury.

I believe a better approach might be to introduce that extra flexibility into the apprenticeship levy system itself, to make it easier and more attractive for employers to offer more apprenticeships at these levels to younger people. This could be done through, for example, enabling part of an employer’s levy funds to be used for pre-apprenticeship training initiatives in schools to identify and prepare young people who might then be suitable candidates for apprenticeships. I am sure there are other ways of motivating employers to offer more apprenticeships of this type, rather than introducing additional rules that could lead to their providing fewer.

I support two and a half thirds of this amendment, but I am slightly uncertain about the mechanism that the noble Lords are implying to address the third one.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I have not participated in any of the proceedings on this Bill, partly because I chair the Economic Affairs Committee and we are looking at central bank digital currencies at the moment. But I bumped into the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who pointed out to me that this amendment is entirely in line with the recommendations made by the committee in its report, Treating Students Fairly, which was published in June three years ago. I shall not repeat the arguments so eloquently put by my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, with every word of which I agree, but it was set out clearly in that report, more than three years ago, that the apprenticeship levy was not working. Indeed, we found that larger employers who were running very effective apprenticeship schemes had simply abandoned it, treating the levy as a tax, and done their own thing.

My noble and learned friend spoke about the way in which all the financial incentives are to keep people in schools and send them on to universities, where they do courses which do not enable many of them to use the skills and achieve the kind of living standards which they aspire to. In short, we probably need more plumbers, electricians, specialists and engineers than we do people who are experts in media studies. I am not saying that media studies is not a serious subject—well, actually, I do think that it is not a serious subject, but that is probably going to get me a lot of abusive emails. I am disappointed that, as this matter was discussed in Committee and as there has been so much about it in the all-party unanimous report, the Government are still dragging their feet on the matter.

When we discuss future topics in our committee, one thing that is regularly suggested is that we look at productivity. We always reject it, on the grounds that it is such a broad subject and so difficult, but this matter is absolutely central to productivity and, even more importantly, offers a future to so many of our young people. So I hope that my noble friend will consider this amendment. I take the point about providing flexibility.

One thing that struck me—and I know that the Government have taken some action on this—was that one of the officials who gave evidence to us proudly announced that the apprenticeship scheme had been used to send her to business school. Of course, that is the antithesis of what the scheme should be. I am not up to date on what has happened since, but there were some 400 different types of rules for different organisations, and the whole thing had become utterly bureaucratic.

The noble Lord, Lord Layard, referred to the Robbins committee. Those of your Lordships who have not read the report should just read the introduction; it is written in the most beautiful prose. It sets out the objectives, from all those years ago, and this amendment is central to achieving them.

When we were looking at treating students fairly, one thing we got in evidence was a diagram showing all the initiatives that had been taken by various Governments for training, and all the changes in names and so on. It is an unbelievably complicated process—not just YTS; there are literally tens and tens of different initiatives. What we need, in the words of Her Majesty the Queen, is perhaps less talk and more doing in this area. This amendment is a very important step forward if the Government decide to accept it.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I had not come to speak in this debate but to listen. However, some things said by my noble friend Lord Forsyth provoke me to make a short intervention. I do so because I am the chairman—I was the founder—of the William Morris Craft Fellowship. Every year, we award craft fellowships to craftsmen working, for the most part, on historic buildings, including stonemasons, plumbers and bricklayers; people who have gone through a proper apprenticeship in the past and who we select because we think they have the potential to oversee a great project. Your Lordships all know the sort of thing to which I refer: a great parish church or cathedral, or a country house in the possession of the National Trust or privately owned. These places are at risk because of the very few people who are coming forward and getting a proper apprenticeship in this modern age.

My noble friend referred to the young woman and the business qualification that she claimed to be an apprenticeship. I have met people who have claimed to have apprenticeships in flower arranging. But I am talking about young men and women—and there is an increasing, though not overall great, number of women— who have spent four, five, six and sometimes seven years learning and mastering a craft. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on the Front Bench opposite, is a great devotee of Durham Cathedral, as I am of Lincoln and indeed all our great cathedrals. Their survival depends upon having men and women who are accomplished and able enough to master these crafts, which go back centuries. And they are in danger.

I am also a vice-president of the Heritage Crafts Association, which represents crafts men and women who very often work individually, at home, producing something, in the William Morris idiom, that is both useful and beautiful. We have produced only recently a red list of endangered crafts. I give you but one example: we are down to the last sporran maker. It might sound slightly amusing, but—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

It is very serious.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

It is serious, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth knows better than most. Not only is it serious but it is outrageous that, to provide sporrans for a Scottish regiment, the Ministry of Defence has recently gone to Pakistan, whereas in Scotland they can still be made.

I will not go on; I hope I have made my point. Apprenticeships are desperately important, and they are not second best. A young man or woman cannot work with his or her hands unless they have a brain that functions—although, rather interestingly, many people with dyslexia are particularly good crafts men and women. We need them, and we must have proper apprenticeships that enable them to become accomplished.

I am very taken by the amendment moved by my old noble and learned friend Lord Clarke. We began in politics together, way back in 1964, fighting in adjacent constituencies. I think he has performed a service to the House by moving his amendment, so ably seconded by the noble Lord, Lord Layard. I very much hope that my noble friend who winds up will accept the thrust and logic of what has been said and give us a comforting reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for their amendments, and all noble Lords who spoke in the debate. I concur with all noble Lords’ ambitions around lifelong learning. This is an important issue with which the Government agree; however, we do not believe it is necessary to specify such a requirement in the Bill.

In April, we launched the free courses for jobs offer as part of the lifetime skills guarantee. This gives all adults in England the opportunity to take their first level 3 qualification for free, regardless of their age. We have ensured that our funding arrangements will allow relevant providers to access further funding if there is higher-than-expected learner demand. Over 400 level 3 qualifications are available, which have been specifically identified for their strong wage outcomes and ability to address key skills needs. Adults in all regions of England have been enrolling since April.

The free courses for jobs offer builds on the pre-existing legal entitlement for 19 to 23 year-olds to access their first full level 2 and/or level 3 qualification—a point raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox of Newport and Lady Garden of Frognal—which the free courses for jobs offer complements. Through the adult education budget, full funding is also available, through legal entitlements, for adults aged 19 and over to access English and maths to improve their literacy and numeracy, and for adults with no or low skills to access fully funded digital skills qualifications, as we discussed in an earlier group of amendments.

The adult education budget also supports colleges and training organisations to work with adults at lower levels who want to re-engage with learning and/or their local labour market. This includes around 2,000 regulated qualifications and their components, and non-regulated learning, from entry level to level 2.

In areas where adult education is not devolved, the adult education budget can fully fund eligible learners studying up to level 2 where they are unemployed or earning below around £17,300 per year. In areas where the adult education budget has been devolved to mayoral combined authorities or the Greater London Authority, they are responsible for determining the provision to support outside of the legal entitlements.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked why the Government will not put the offer of free courses for jobs on a statutory footing. As she will be aware, this policy has been in delivery since April and is already benefiting adults aged 19 and above without a prior level 3 qualification in all regions of England. We do not believe that it is necessary to legislate in order to deliver this important investment in the nation’s skills.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am most grateful to my noble friend. It is fantastic that she has listed all these initiatives, but it does not really explain why she is not prepared to put this in the Bill. She says that she does not believe that it is necessary. Why?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sorry; I thought that I was clear in my remarks. We are already delivering the policy and therefore do not believe that it is necessary to have it in the Bill.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

But—

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If my noble friend will allow me to finish, I will come on to talk about some of the wider issues—particularly in relation to funding, on which I know he is a great expert—further on in my comments.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I do not wish to press too hard on this, but Governments are here today, gone tomorrow, and Ministers change. By putting this amendment in the Bill, it is clear to everyone what the future is; otherwise, we are relying on administrative decisions, which can change.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is quite within his rights to press me and the Government as hard as he sees fit, but I have set out the Government’s position as best as I can at this stage.

Turning to the other aspects of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I agree that the list of qualifications—