Adult Education and Lifelong Learning

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness and I echo in particular her comments about the need for more second chances. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Sharp on a wide-ranging and challenging opening speech. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on his excellent maiden speech, and say that we will be looking at his clothing very carefully in the future.

I particularly want to congratulate my noble friend Lady Williams on her valedictory speech. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who is also a former Education Secretary, sadly cannot be in her place today but has asked me to pass on her tribute to the contribution made by my noble friend to public and political life. She notes that laying the foundations for comprehensive secondary education is a testimony to my noble friend’s commitment to opportunity for all young people. She also asked me to say that my noble friend was “one of those who confirmed my belief that politics is a force for good and a place for women”. Judging by the warm reception that my noble friend was given by shoppers in Bath when campaigning there during the last election, it is clear that she is one of a rare breed: a universally popular politician. She has done much to change the landscape of British politics and her contribution to education is immense. She will be missed in your Lordships’ House.

My noble friend understands the personal, social and economic benefit of high-quality education and training, sharing the view of HG Wells that:

“Civilisation is in a race between education and catastrophe”.

We cannot be complacent that we are winning the race. We lag behind our competitor countries in skills. Some 8 million British adults lack functional numeracy skills and 5 million lack literacy skills. We have productivity below the G7 average and we know that only by addressing the skills challenge will we turn this around. And while today we are debating adult education, training and lifelong learning, we should not forget that success in these depends on high-quality education in our schools, especially in the early years, and in particular on giving vocational education parity of esteem with academic education. While we debate the ways to upskill the population, we need also to tackle the skills mismatch. It is estimated that nearly half of employers have staff with skills and qualifications beyond those required to do their jobs, leading to demoralisation and reduced productivity. Tackling that requires in part high-quality careers advice and information.

We do have a long-standing adult education pedigree and we recognise the important impact it has on social well-being, the development of communities and the growth of businesses, but there is a mismatch between the rhetoric and the reality as government support for lifelong learning and the funding of adult education has continued to reduce. Cuts were made under the Labour Government and there were further cuts under the coalition. Fortunately, despite those ongoing reductions, our network of further education colleges and community learning providers has found creative ways to continue to offer their communities and businesses opportunities for learning, training and development. Bath College, for example, through its excellent Love2Learn programme, provides adults with affordable courses and programmes in 300 different subjects and makes creative use of the funding available to ensure that the most vulnerable in the community do not lose out.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised the need to stabilise the budget and welcome the approaches taken to the newly named adult education budget, alongside the reforms to the funding of apprenticeships. Apprenticeships were a major achievement of the coalition Government which is already paying dividends, and I welcome the planned expansion. As MP for Bath, I was pleased to have helped Bath College and employers achieve a growth of 117% in the number of apprenticeships in the city. Seeing world-beating companies like Rotork plc use the apprenticeship programme to identify and develop its future engineers and managers was simply stunning.

As we have already heard, the digital economy is now 10% of the total economy and it is good to see successful apprenticeships in this area. For example, in addition to its 40-year collaboration with the Open University and its Make It Digital traineeships for 5,000 young employed people, the BBC is providing apprenticeship schemes in local radio, digital journalism and degree-level engineering. UK Music, supported by the creative employment programme, runs a successful music apprenticeship scheme. I welcome the Government’s continued development of apprenticeships for those reasons.

However, college leaders are beginning to talk about confusion and uncertainty. I therefore urge the Government to avoid over-complex, burdensome measures, so that the needs of apprentices and their employers are put first. It is local people who know what is best for meeting their local skills needs. Colleges, councils, LEPs and universities, many of which now operate in collaborative partnerships, are best placed to design and shape their adult education and skills systems. That is why devolution of some aspects of the adult education budget is broadly welcome. The notion of the local outcome agreement featuring in many of the devolution submissions really is a way forward to ensure local systems are being designed for local people and businesses.

I have one final plea: that we should give localities the autonomy to deliver on these without further central interference. For far too long there has been too much interference and too many changes. Now let us give the system a chance to rebuild a world-beating skills system which will strengthen the United Kingdom economy.