Young People: Alternatives to University

Lord Macdonald of Tradeston Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of Tradeston (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Monks for securing this excellent debate. The growing support for vocational training and apprenticeships is encouraging. As a time-served engineering apprentice, I hope that it restores some of the esteem that vocational training once had.

Labour Party policy on vocational education and training draws on the work of our skills task force, led by Professor Chris Husbands. Labour’s commitment will also be reinforced by the recent report of my noble friend Lord Adonis, Mending the Fractured Economy, in which he advocates a major expansion of high-quality vocational education and apprenticeships promoted locally to address skills shortages. In addition, Ed Miliband appointed Maggie Philbin, the former presenter of “Tomorrow’s World” to chair another task force on digital skills. Her recent report, Digital Skills for Tomorrow’s World, makes many practical and affordable recommendations, starting with schools, where digital training must begin if those who later choose a vocational route are to succeed.

To put that in context, the digital revolution is gathering pace and that will have a profound effect on the alternatives available to young school leavers. The McKinsey Global Institute recently listed what it described as Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will Transform Life, Business and the Global Economy. The first was the mobile internet. The second was the automation of knowledge work. The third was the growing network of sensors embedded in our lifestyles—the internet of things. At number four was that other arcane advance, cloud technology. Fifthly, there was the more familiar threat to jobs: advanced robotics. Those are the five horsemen of the digital apocalypse, as sketched by the consultants of McKinsey.

The risk to jobs is also highlighted by Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, who conclude that jobs are at risk of being automated in almost half of all occupational categories over the next two decades, including repetitive functions in management and professions largely untouched until now, such as law, accounting, medicine and academia.

It is not easy to give career advice on how young people might shelter from this gathering storm. When the Economist listed the jobs most likely to survive computerisation, in its inimitable way it led with recreational therapy, then dentists, then personal trainers and then—the right reverend Prelate will be glad to hear—members of the clergy. The serious point is that almost all alternatives for young people not going to university will also be digitised; therefore, the factor that might be of most help to most young people will be to improve their digital skills.

The trend in the jobs market points towards self-employment and the forced flexibility of contract work. An insecure portfolio future of short projects, collaboration, marketing and pitching for work will require good social skills and familiarity with all aspects of social media online. A positive hope is that the popularity of social media among young people, with all its risks and allure, will help close the gender gap, with more young women keen to learn digital skills. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, technology and online access may also be a new way into work for people with disabilities and could encourage ethnic groups into wider roles across the economy.

I confine myself to recommendations from our Labour reviews on education and the need to start with smaller steps on the first rungs of the ladder. A promising start has been made in English primary schools with a new computing curriculum. The view of Labour and our commissioned digital skills report is that we should now ensure that each school has the funding to support the ambition. Similarly, teachers must be trained in computing as a matter of urgency through properly resourced continuous professional development. Each school could be encouraged to recruit a governor with expertise in computing and they could network best practice across their local schools. Business and professional bodies should collaborate to create a national online service dedicated to digital career advice. The pressing importance of digital skills must be acted on now at all levels of education. Additionally, schools could have a key role in hosting community access to digital infrastructure and expertise. Beyond the school gates, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry said, further education institutions could play a key role if they are able to adapt quickly to the new priorities.

In conclusion, I do not think that this Government or previous Labour Governments have done too badly compared to global competitors across the developing digital economy. The digital revolution is now global and constantly changing, so a degree of confusion and false starts is inevitable. However, a priority for government in this area must be to reduce the bewildering number of overlapping organisations and initiatives—that blizzard of acronyms referred to by my noble friend Lord Monks. The Government should rationalise, cut duplicated costs and ensure that young people exploring their career options can navigate the digital world with skill and confidence. Can the Minister tell the House what progress they have made in cutting through the clutter?