Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring that my wife is a consultant with the Education and Training Foundation and by thanking the Minister for the extensive briefings that we have already received from him and officials on the Bill. It is a great pleasure to wind up for the Opposition. This Bill is clearly very important; it goes to the heart of one of the major challenges that we as a country face and builds on the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lord Sainsbury by laying some of the foundations that they set out. The House as a whole clearly welcomes the provisions; there is consensus in support of the Government’s main aim in relation to apprenticeships; but a number of issues have been raised that I hope we can debate in Committee.

The first issue is the quality of apprenticeship programmes. There is a concern that the target of 3 million may override the importance of quality in the programmes that will be offered. The second issue is the question of who is ultimately responsible for driving the quality of apprenticeship programmes. This is not clear and I believe that we need to tease it out in our debates. There has been a challenge over the levy and the potential for perverse incentives—my noble friend Lord Young raised it—and also questions about SME participation. We have also heard a great deal about the focus on the need for young people to receive good-quality and objective careers advice from the ages of 14 to 16, and concerns about the long-term funding viability of the FE sector after a long period of funding cuts.

Overall, the debate has shown how pressing the need is to improve technical education, in which apprenticeships play an important part, if we are to do anything about our poor performance in basic and technical skills, which is surely key to the UK’s persistently low levels of productivity compared with other advanced economies. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, suggested, we have an alarming shortage of high-skilled technicians and, more generally, a shortage of people coming to work in sectors that depend on the STEM subjects.

The Government are investing much in an expansion of the apprenticeship programme as a core response to these worrying problems. They do so against a background of hard evidence that the current apprenticeships programme is not working. The Ofsted review in 2015 found that,

“in a third of the 45 providers visited, apprenticeships did not provide sufficient, high-quality training that stretched the apprentices and improved their capabilities”.

The review also found:

“The quality of the apprenticeship provision reviewed during this survey was too variable and … poor … The growth in apprenticeships in the last eight years has not focused sufficiently on the sectors with skills shortages … Leaders of the apprenticeship provision reviewed did not focus sufficiently on improving the quality and impact of apprenticeships”.


So the big question is whether the Government’s approach will turn this around; we all certainly hope so. However, the IFS report yesterday was somewhat worrying in its suggestion that it had concerns about whether the approach would provide sufficient value for money. The most telling criticism was the question of whether the target of 600,000 new apprenticeships a year will risk quality at the expense of quantity—my noble friend Lady Morris raised this point. I put it to the Minister that the clear risk is that in the end, because the 3 million target has been set, his officials and the bodies responsible will have that as the core target. We know that once you go for a mathematical figure, quality tends to take a back seat. I plead with the Minister to accept that the numbers are less important than the quality.

We know, too, that the Government are putting much on an employer-led approach; I understand that. But, as my noble friend said, this is not the first time that employers have been put in command. The fact is that some of the failures of the past are due to employers themselves lacking sufficient interest or investment in training and apprenticeship programmes. I know that the board that has been appointed to the institute is of very high quality—there is no question about that—but it will need to carry with it the whole employer sector, and that is where we must express some concerns about the proposals.

The second major question that has arisen today is about trying to get to the bottom of who, in the end, is responsible for making this work—for the promotion of apprenticeships, for quality, and for making sure that all the agencies involved can pull together in a cohesive approach. This has been raised with Ministers and officials in briefings. The noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, and my noble friend Lady Morris asked these questions and, essentially, we have been told that the Secretary of State is responsible for policy, the institute is responsible for designing standards, Ofsted is responsible for inspecting provision and Ofqual will inspect the assessments. My worry is that this sounds like a very diffuse approach to responsibility.

I acknowledge that the Government have appointed a very fine board, but will it actually have the capacity, the leadership and, indeed, the courage to take on a core primary leadership role? I believe that this is essential. I take the point of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the Youth Justice Board being a model of where one agency has to be responsible in the end. I do not think that it should be Minsters. The board should be able to say what it thinks about what needs to happen and what is going wrong. In Schedule 1, there is one paragraph that imposes a duty on the bodies concerned to share information. I would have liked to see a duty of co-operation—a statutory duty on all these bodies to work together in relation to apprenticeships and technical and further education. I hope that the Minister will consider that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked why insolvency measures appeared to be so up front in the Bill. There are in fact only one or two clauses that are not to do with insolvency of the further education sector. I know that the finances of FE colleges in particular are somewhat vulnerable, but this Bill does have a rather unbalanced approach in terms of its provisions.

There is no question that further education has taken a big hit in funding over the last few years. It is not surprising that the sector as a whole is financially vulnerable. In thinking about the challenges facing the FE sector, particularly FE colleges, in the future, I would like to ask the noble Lord a few questions about the governance of FE colleges. Over the last few years those corporations have taken on more and more responsibility, yet it is clear from the colleges that have run into great financial difficulty that often their board has not been on top of the issues. There is also evidence that some principals have rather lost themselves in foreign adventures, if I can put it that way, to the ultimate financial detriment of those colleges. Indeed, a college in Birmingham is facing problems at the moment.

I was very interested to read a paper by the former Learning and Skills Improvement Service which identified a number of issues with governors. The paper stated that in FE there can be too much polite consensus to avoid conflict, insufficient challenge, a business focus at the expense of core educational performance, taking on but not managing bigger risks—and with the clerk, who essentially is the company secretary in FE, being undervalued in being able to stimulate and facilitate good governance. In the light of the insolvency provisions, which put even more responsibility on individual and corporate governors in those colleges, what is being done to strengthen governance? Company secretaries play a vital role in other public bodies and in the private sector in ensuring good-quality governance. Does the noble Lord accept that the number of FE clerks has been reduced, as have their pay and hours, and that sometimes principals appoint their secretary as a clerk? Will he look into ways in which we can strengthen that governance?

Clause 14, on student protection, is very welcome. However, the University and College Union points out that there may still be problems, particularly in relation to students continuing their studies when their provider has fallen into financial difficulty, and that they may be required to travel long distances. The union also points out that in a transitional situation and administration process it is vital to retain experienced staff to ensure that students continue to be taught by experienced teachers. So I have questions on Clause 14, but the broad principle is very welcome indeed.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talked about the interface between schools and all the opportunities that lie outside. There is strong consensus on the need to strengthen the careers service. Part of that must be about UTCs and the FE sector having access to schools. But we should not underestimate the problem. It is not in the financial interest of those schools for their students to move to other providers. Although I support the relevant amendment, somehow we have to find a way to make the heads of those schools understand that it is in the public interest, and certainly the interest of their students, that the students have access to careers advice. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, made the very interesting suggestion that Ofsted might have a role here, and we need to look at that.