Education Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

142: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Distance learning at Academies
(1) An Academy may admit pupils on the basis that they will receive all or part of their education otherwise than on the premises of the school.
(2) If an Academy admits such pupils, it may arrange for all or part of their education to be provided through distance learning packages without any teacher present, or by the pupil’s parents or other volunteers similarly.
(3) The Academy remains in all respects responsible for the educational outcomes of such pupils.”

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I think that we should take the opportunity of the freedoms afforded by the move to an academy education to explore ways in which we can reach some parts of the education system that have been left fallow by the current rather less imaginative arrangements. I am thinking of some elements of home education that would benefit very much from having partial access to school. I am thinking of prisoners and Travellers and I am thinking of others who, for one reason or another, find it hard to attend a mainstream school on a standard basis.

There are such schools around. There are schools that are purely internet based. I am thinking of InterHigh, but there are certain others. There are schools in the state system, including one recent free school which is prepared to make arrangements with local home schools so that pupils can attend school some days a week. As far as I know there is nothing along these lines in prisons and young offender institutions, but it would be a very good innovation to start getting real schools into those institutions and allowing pupils to interact with real schooling rather than the cut-down version provided in prisons. Indeed it would allow them to continue being educated at the schools they have left behind, if that were appropriate.

Travellers could get into a situation where they could have a relationship with one school rather than having to switch school every time they move site. There is no reason why these people cannot be visited and looked after. The Travellers Education Service does a very good job and there is no reason why that cannot continue in terms of human contact. Allowing academies to explore ways in which they can look after these rather low volume and eccentric demands provides a way for small rural schools to flourish. That has been the motivation, by and large, for looking after home schoolers. It allows small rural schools to draw in a rather wider, larger number of people, to address a local need on a more widespread basis, and to allow village schools to continue, whereas otherwise they might not.

This is the sort of freedom that we should be encouraging and of which we should take advantage. We should never lose sight of the need for quality and proper control, but we should take advantage of the liberties we are looking at in terms of academies, to address these small but, none the less, interesting and worthwhile problems. I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, this is an interesting amendment. It is certainly worthy of discussion and perhaps of support when the vote comes at some later point.

I have a couple of questions. Why only academies? I think that this is quite interesting for all schools and I am not sure why the amendment should restrict it to academies. My feeling is that there are initiatives like this already. I can think of an online school based in Birmingham, and I think in other areas, where children who have been excluded from school or just do not turn up—the school refuses to take them—are now educated online and are not based in school. If my memory serves me right, the legislation on Travellers means that children can stay on a school’s register even when they are travelling, and the Travellers Education Service would then aim to keep in touch with them.

My point is really that the beginnings of this are already happening, and this has been precipitated by the advances in information technology which have helped a great deal. I have no problem with a debate that furthers that. You need very strong boundaries so that children are not denied opportunities by somebody who does not have their best welfare at heart, and that would have to be discussed.

For the purpose of this debate, I invite the noble Lord, when he responds—or he may want to intervene now—to explain why he would restrict this to academies and not to any school in the system.

[Lord Lucas]

Just to fit in with the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

No, but they still need teachers. You are quite right: they do not need qualified teachers, but they need teachers who help to communicate and teach subjects to pupils.

In conclusion, we believe that much of what my noble friend intends is already possible and is already happening. To the extent that it is not, I would ask him to recognise the value that a good teacher can add to the educational experience of a pupil. We recognise that there is a growing place for technology, alternative teaching and learning provisions. Many of us will remember, with gratitude, the impact of inspirational teachers during our own education and the difference that that personal motivation and contact made to our enthusiasm about learning. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend has been reassured that those freedoms already exist and that we may not need to return to this on Report. Therefore, I urge him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

I am very encouraged by what the noble Baroness says about all this being possible. I am also very pleased about what she said on the role of the church. I entirely agree with her. I hope that she will have a chance to pass that news on to the prison education service which appears determined to eliminate teachers and do it all online. Doubtless, I will come back to her or, I suspect, to my noble friend, on the subject of funding, which has arisen from time to time. The complexity of the guidance offered by this otherwise excellent department confuses local authorities from time to time and certainly schools as to whether particular arrangements qualify for funding and, if so, on what basis. To take a particular example, if a home-educated child wishes to go to a further education college at the age of 14, they can get no funding for that. Perhaps that is something to be followed up by letter rather than in this forum. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 142 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am sure that it is out of order for me to speak at this point, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me. I was participating in a long-standing commitment to attend an awards ceremony for young people on the National Grid young offender programme. I heard about the success of four young men, one of whom left prison a year ago and is now moving into management in his firm. It was marvellous to see the enthusiasm of the young men and to hear their stories. It illustrates how important it is to find useful work that these men enjoy doing. I have been to ceremonies in the past and seen the young men with their partners and young children. They have shown that they can be fathers who are present for their children, who take an interest in them and who set them a good example. That is very much to be welcomed. I was sorry to hear at this event that Sir John Parker, the chairman of National Grid Transco, who has led the scheme over the past 10 years, is shortly to retire. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his leadership in taking forward the programme and recruiting so many other companies and businesses. Soon they will have trained 2,000 young offenders for work. I declare an interest: I have received hospitality from that company in the past. I apologise for speaking out of order, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me on this occasion.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I had better say to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that I will not move Amendment 145 because I had a wonderful e-mail from the Minister saying that he had done everything he possibly could and that all sorts of wonderful reductions in paperwork were on the way. All I can say is thank you.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, and I have been waiting rather a long time for our cameo role in this Bill. I hope that my voice lasts the course of this debate. It has been a very useful debate, and I hope that I can manage to answer some of the points and give an indication of where the Government are going and how we wish to continue to speak to all noble Lords involved with apprenticeships and address the concerns that have been expressed. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for saying that he welcomes what we are doing but wants, as I think he put it, to stretch out our commitment. That is the theme behind a lot of the amendments that have been tabled, and I would like to discuss them in due course.

However, if the noble Lord will bear with me, I shall start with the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, supported by a weighty list of noble Lords from all sides of the House. I know they have been discussing their amendment with my colleague John Hayes, and I am very grateful for that. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, had a further useful conversation with my honourable friend earlier this afternoon and that he is willing to work with the Government on a government amendment that would come forward on Report to achieve the shared aim of promoting apprenticeships to young people in a way that fits in with the redefined apprenticeships offer. I hope that after discussing this matter with my noble friend Lord Wakeham and the other noble Lords who tabled the amendment, the noble Lord will send his proposal to me or to my honourable friend. We have a reasonable amount of time because of the odd way this House is sitting and then breaking off so that we can all go off to our conferences. I do not know whether the noble Lord is going, but some of us are. There is certainly time for discussions to continue to take place on that. I give an assurance that doors are still open and that discussion will continue to take place.

I now return to the noble Lord, Lord Young, and congratulate him on his speech. I apologise for the fact that he was interrupted not once, but twice by Division Bells in the Chamber. I shall deal with one or two of the points that he raised in his amendment. First, he mentioned his concerns about the number of 16 to 18 starts. The figures the department has are that there were 99,400 starts in 2008-09, 116,000 starts in 2009-10 and 102,900 starts in the first nine months of 2010-11, and one hopes that there will be more. We hope that we will continue to see some sort of increase. I hope that the noble Lord will find those figures useful.

He also commented on targets. I note that the Government of whom he was a distinguished member were very keen on targets. I have always been less keen on targets and think that they can very often distort and end up producing the wrong result because people merely go for whatever the number is on paper. We do not want to have targets in this area, but we obviously have to work to planning assumptions modelled by the analysts based on previous years and future ambitions. That is where we get the figures that he was talking about. I think he should consider that targets in themselves can sometimes produce the wrong result.

I shall turn in slightly more detail to the noble Lord’s three amendments: Amendments 144AA, 144AB and 144C. Amendment 144AA deals with the offer. I understand the noble Lord’s concern, and I can assure him that the Government wholeheartedly share it. We also want to see many young people starting their careers on a sound basis through apprenticeship, as the noble Lord did himself. We differ only in our view about the most effective way to achieve that. That is why my honourable friend wants further discussions with the noble Lords behind that amendment.

The previous Government, of whom the noble Lord was a member, did much good work in building the apprenticeship programme. We accept that. They substantially increased the number of people undertaking an apprenticeship and put in place many of the structures and procedures that make the apprenticeship programme what it is today. We acknowledge that. However, the original offer set out in the 2009 legislation of an apprenticeship place for all suitably qualified young people in specific groups would mean the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency having to find jobs with employers for all the eligible young people who wanted an apprenticeship, but neither he nor Government can tell employers whom to employ. I think the noble Lord will accept that point.

Our redefined offer in this Bill constitutes a more robust deal for those same groups of young people because we know we can deliver it. The duty on the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency to prioritise funding for their training once they have an apprenticeship place sets the right balance between the employer-led nature of the programme and the need for support from government that young people can rely on.

In Amendment 144AB, the noble Lord suggests that procurement could be used as a vehicle for encouraging employers to take on a number of apprentices. Amendments 144AB and 144AC raise three issues: first, increasing the number of apprentices working on government projects, secondly, regularly publishing the numbers and planned numbers of apprentices in the Civil Service, and thirdly, linking apprenticeships and Investors in People status. I know my honourable friend recently met the noble Lord to discuss all those subjects and to explain the Government’s fundamental belief in a voluntary rather than a regulatory approach. I have always believed that in government. It is a better approach to follow to avoid additional burdens, particularly on smaller employers and smaller businesses. I know that my honourable friend outlined the actions he is leading to drive up the number of apprenticeships in the public sector.

On procurement, the Government want to encourage more businesses to offer apprenticeships for the clear benefits they bring to individuals and employers, but we do not believe that the best approach is to impose this by adding to the mountain of rules and regulations that businesses face on procurement at the moment and which are really very substantial. Rather, we are committed to simplifying and streamlining the procurement process to reduce burdens for suppliers and public sector bodies. Within these parameters, I know that my honourable friend has reiterated to the noble Lord his intention to look again at our policies and the way they could encourage more apprenticeship places, without disadvantaging SMEs or, of course, breaching the law.

Turning to the noble Lord’s amendment on Investors in People status, I am sure that he would agree that Investors in People is the mark of an employer that cares deeply about the long-term skills needs of its workforce and understands the business advantages of skilled and motivated staff but, because of the wide range of benefits of Investors in People status to staff and employers, we would not want further to discourage take-up of the standard. If we were to add extra conditions at this stage, such as needing to demonstrate a commitment to apprenticeships, we possibly risk inadvertently reducing employer engagement with the programme.

Amendment 144C, which was tabled by my noble friend Lord Addington, relates to apprenticeship specification and disabled people. I understand that he is seeking assurances that learners who demonstrate that they have the skills and experience to meet the requirements of an apprenticeship certificate should not be prevented from receiving a certificate on the basis of any recognised disability. I understand that we have written to the noble Lord to provide reassurances on this and to explain the steps that we are taking to ensure that apprentices with a disability are at no disadvantage in the certification process for an apprenticeship. If my noble friend feels that is not sufficient, my honourable friend would be happy to have further discussions with my noble friend between this stage and Report.