Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Rooker Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree very much with a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, has just said. But I shall be listening to the Minister respond—I hope—to the questions from the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Puttnam, and to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, made about the cuts.

Of course, I must welcome what was—no doubt about it—an awesome maiden speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome. I fully admit that I had read about her in the past and was in awe of what she was doing and what she had achieved. Her speech was absolutely magnificent.

First, I declare my interests—no, let us do the Lords’ interests. At present, there are about a dozen ex or current university vice-chancellors in the Lords and, last time I checked, over 40 university chancellors. I am unaware of any leader or ex-leader of further education being in the Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, made the point about the cuts to FE. If that had happened in higher education, there were 40 chancellors waiting in the Lords to pounce on Ministers.

In 12 years in government, in several departments, I never met a civil servant who had further education experience and, as far as I am aware, no one in the Cabinet has been through further education. It is a bold claim, of course, but I doubt that many Members of the House have had actual FE experience as a student—and as for the Commons, such experience today would be a rarity. This makes the Bill even more important. It is concerned with important aspects of life that policymakers and lawmakers have no hands-on experience of. Those are not quite the criteria to get it right.

I left secondary technical school in 1957. There were two such 13-plus schools in Birmingham, one specialising in engineering at Handsworth and the other in Bournville specialising in construction. It is amazing: these are of course two of the sectors where there are skills gaps existing now that this Bill is supposed to address, but there were only ever two technical schools in Birmingham. I did three years day release in further education while I was doing my indentured apprenticeship for a mechanical engineering Ordinary National Certificate, and two nights a week to get my endorsements in electrical and English—although I suspect I never really made it in the latter.

In the FE college at the time, there was abundant adult education, as there was in some secondary schools. For many years in the period 1972 to 1997, I served on the board of an FE college, so I was aware at first hand of the changes from pure technical skill to a more comprehensive range of courses, and the change from local authority control. I think our first action on the board, post local authority, was to change the name of the college so that people knew where it was. This was far more important than it sounds, by the way, from a marketing point of view.

In some ways, I missed the phase where colleges became more competitive and aggressive, and indeed remote from their communities—although I was shocked, when taking over from my friend the late Lord Corbett of Castle Vale as chair of the local community organisation, by the negative approach of a city centre further education college to a campus at Castle Vale. That was caused purely by remoteness.

I freely admit I am now more out of date, but I want the Government to succeed in this endeavour for the good of the country—as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said, this is not a political Bill. But I fear a further narrowing of the existing provision and curriculum. It appears the educator voice is missing, which cannot be a surprise given my introductory remarks, and there is clearly no accountability to communities. I am not, however, fearful of employer involvement in courses. This was very strongly the case in the 1950s and 1970s, but employers are not the same. Today they are more “here today, gone tomorrow” than in the days before our deindustrialisation. Some strategic stability is required and therefore a partnership with educators is vital—and I have to say that I think this should include professional organisations such as the chartered institutions. I do not think anybody has referred to those today. They were crucial in FE, in awarding certificates, along with the old Ministry of Education.

The range of courses has got utterly out of control due to the market. But we need to be careful about classifying qualifications that have so-called “low economic value” and therefore restricting choice and flexibility. Low economic value to one can be the salvation for another new enterprise or product. We have an unequal nation where levelling up is not I hope intended to make us all the same, but we need to ensure that the Bill works for more diverse, non-traditional cohorts of students.

Further education, unlike higher education—I have a mixed experience of a sandwich course at a college of advanced technology and then, after a 10-year gap, post-graduate work—can be more transformative. It can help build the alert democracy and support the aspirations of all, going well beyond skills preparation for jobs. For some, it may be the only route to any qualifications they ever obtain, but there needs to be LA involvement, maybe through the mayors. We ignore our local capacity at our peril. Indeed, I once read that a nation’s greatest asset was the capacity and willingness of its people to work. This Bill must improve our human asset base.