Polytechnics

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on introducing this debate. I will start by telling your Lordships that I went to a technical college, or polytechnic. It was Salford Technical College before it became a university—which tells you how ancient I am. In those days there were more than 100 technical colleges providing the kind of route that my noble friend Lady Morris described for non-academic young people such as me to train for work and to acquire specialist skills and knowledge. The cost was minimal and, yes, it helped me to get a good start in industry. As a preparation for a later career in your Lordships’ House it was perhaps less effective—but that is for another debate.

Your Lordships’ Select Committee on Social Mobility, reporting last month—and what a good report it is—made the point that the kind of non-academic, technical pathway that I enjoyed has been neglected and overlooked for years, leaving many young people struggling to find their way when they leave school, especially those who come from disadvantaged homes. Yes, there are FE colleges for full-time and part-time education, but they tend to concentrate on levels 2 and 3. The report describes the transition as complex and incoherent, with confusing incentives for both young people and employers. My noble friend Lady Morris mentioned this.

At first sight, bringing back old polytechnics could be an attractive way of making the transition. But that was then and this is now. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, told us that this is a time when robots, digitalisation and artificial intelligence are completely changing the nature of work: a time not only when manual jobs are changing but when professional jobs are being done by robots and thinking machines. In today’s world of work, this kind of transformation is happening not only in making and building things but also in services, in medicine, in accountancy, in management, in transport, in teaching, in communications and in customer services. I read somewhere that last year one-third of law graduates were working at menial jobs after graduating. At the same time the Royal Academy of Engineering tells us that we are short of 40,000 engineers each year. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned this mismatch.

Employers keep telling us that in this modern world of work we require lots more of the softer and wider skills such as learning how to solve problems, engaging with others, working together and having the resilience to cope with change—because that is the world of work that people are going to move into. Preparation for this transformed world of work is more fundamental than just learning a skill or mastering a technology; it involves being schooled in its new way of life. So what is the best preparation? I am not sure that it is technical colleges; I think that it is technical schools. We have to start earlier to prepare young people for this changing pattern. Because the Government now provide funds for innovation for new types of schools, schools are being introduced to address the situation, including studio schools, university technical colleges—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Baker—and specialist schools.

The noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, told us how well UTCs were working because the curriculum includes design and digital technology, electronics, IT and systems controls. These are being learned at school, not at technical college. The curriculum is designed to develop the human as well as the technical skills that pupils are going to need. As the noble Baroness told us, employers introduce projects into these schools. The universities mentor students to help them with the complexities of moving from school into working life, and they are prepared for working life because at UTCs pupils already do a full nine to five working day.

As the noble Baroness told us, this kind of curriculum and schooling produces a stream of young people who are welcomed to the world of work because they are more employable, better prepared—and better prepared to cope with the growing world of self-employment. I suggest that there is a lot more value for money in technical schools than in new technical colleges. I know that some of these schools have failed, especially studio schools, but that is what happens with innovation: some ideas succeed, some do not. Finding what works is never a straight path; sometimes you require trial and error. My view is that we should persevere with the technical schools and UTCs because they are beginning to show their worth and will deliver more value for money than new technical colleges—and that is from somebody who went to a technical college.