Young People: Skills (Youth Unemployment Committee Report)

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Shipley]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Youth Unemployment Committee Skills for every young person (HL Paper 98), Session 2021-22.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to speak to the report of the Youth Unemployment Committee, Skills for Every Young Person. It is some 210 pages long and contains 88 conclusions and recommendations. I thank the staff who supported the committee: Simon Keal, our clerk, Francesca Crossley, our policy analyst, and Abdullah Ahmad, our operations officer. I also thank our specialist advisers, Dr Kathleen Henehan from the Resolution Foundation and Oliver Newton from the Edge Foundation.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for enabling the Youth Unemployment Committee to be created at a time when there were serious worries about the impact of Covid on young people. There are long-term consequences of Covid, which are affecting many young people. I thank the members of the committee for their work over nine months during the Covid lockdown, when we met mostly by Zoom and Teams. I thank those speaking today, who will add their own experiences and insight to our work during this debate.

On behalf of the committee, I thank all the many people who submitted evidence to us or attended as witnesses: all the school, academy and college leaders, employers, charities, academics and, of course, young people themselves. It was of fundamental importance to us to listen directly to young people. Thanks must go to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for facilitating our listening engagement with young people in Bolton and south-east Lancashire, to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby for facilitating a similar listening engagement in the east Midlands and to the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, for facilitating our listening engagement in London with young people from ethnic-minority backgrounds. This approach proved highly rewarding and played a major part in developing the thinking of the committee.

There has been a long delay of a year in holding this debate, but it has the advantage of being held with a new set of Ministers at the helm. The Prime Minister has put education at the centre of unlocking growth, and it is reported that the Government will attempt to boost growth through investment in training and end the long-standing bias towards academic rather than technical qualifications. Skills are the bedrock of a thriving labour market. We heard again and again that there is a serious mismatch between the skills young people develop in school and college today and those that the future economy will need. This is caused by two key issues.

First, the developing economy has new sectors and jobs—in the green sector and the digital sector, where there is growth in cyber and artificial intelligence. At the same time, existing sectors such as social care are struggling to fill posts. To tackle this, we recommended that the Government develop a long-term national plan for anticipating and addressing skills mismatches.

Secondly, we heard from employers that when students leave school, many do not have the skills they need to find work. The school system is characterised by a national curriculum focused on academic subjects and written exams. This is not helping young people develop or showcase other skills that we need, such as teamwork, communication, creativity or problem solving. Equally, although careers guidance has improved, it is still not being taught uniformly and is not being supported by quality work experience provision. This means that too many young people are not aware of the skills they need to get into a new, growing sector.

Therefore, we recommended that the Government must recalibrate the compulsory components of the national curriculum and performance measures, putting skills at their heart. Digital and creative subjects such as design and technology are seen as less important than other subjects in the Government’s EBacc measure, while essential skills such as oracy, teamwork, and problem solving are not being tested because of the focus on the academic. I was very disappointed to read in the press last week of suggestions that design and technology may continue to decline because of the poor funding situation of many schools. This must be avoided.

We were disappointed by the Government’s response to our report, in which they argued that they do not see a need for curriculum reform. I am confident that the committee is right and that what we have said reflects the general view outside Whitehall and Westminster.

As an example, the president of the Royal Society in a letter to the Times on 28 October said:

“While preparing people for the workplace is not the sole aim of education, if it is failing to do this, it is failing young people and the economy. For too long we have allowed academic snobbery to make vocational education the poor relation and laughed off a lack of maths skills.”


This strikes a chord with our recommendations 82 to 87 on the national curriculum.

On a more positive note, we were pleased to hear that the Government will produce better, more accessible information on skills. The publication of data from the Skills and Productivity Board and the creation of a new Unit for Future Skills is welcome. We still believe that more should be done to facilitate careers guidance in primary schools; it is where individual career decisions start to be made.

While youth unemployment has fallen from its pandemic peak, it remains higher than in several comparable global economies. Although we have seen a fall in the number of young people not in employment, education or training since mid-2020, the recent estimate of over 600,000 young people in this category is simply far too high at a time when we have 500,000 job vacancies across the United Kingdom. This problem is exacerbated by past and present Governments under- funding and undervaluing further education in comparison with the university route, as well as there not being enough apprenticeship opportunities for young people who want to do them, and the apprenticeship levy not being focused primarily on young people.

Young people who are disadvantaged are still not receiving the support that they need—we talk in chapter 6 of the issues that the lack of support creates for those groups. We said that to tackle disadvantage as a barrier to work, we must ensure that all young people—especially the most disadvantaged, including those with additional needs, those in care and those in custody—have access to quality careers advice from primary school age onwards and a strong work experience offer. It became clear to us that more disability employment advisers are needed.

We called for a new education and workplace race equality strategy that tackles discrimination and unequal opportunities. I draw particular attention to recommendations 59 and 60 about young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, who still face barriers. That strategy would focus on collecting data and proposing targeted support programmes. I know that the Government said that they did not feel such a race equality strategy was necessary at this time; nevertheless, they committed to monitoring our recommendations and addressing any concerns. I strongly hope that they will do so.

We heard a lot of evidence about progression routes needing to be available so that those starting a course know what they should move on to do next. The biggest example of that was Kickstart, where there was no clear progression route following taking part in the course. We were told that we needed better promotion of careers and apprenticeships in schools and that there was a need for rigorous enforcement of the Baker clause to ensure parity of esteem for technical and academic routes. We were told, too, that there was a need for a careers guidance guarantee that would enable every disadvantaged young person to have access to one-to-one careers guidance, as well as a need for a constant review of the real impact of careers hubs and the Careers & Enterprise Company on individual schools and colleges and a continuous review of T-levels to ensure their availability in all parts of the country. We were impressed by the potential for the use of the UCAS system to include apprenticeships using local platforms. We thought that there was a need for a lifetime skills guarantee to apply to qualifications below level 3, and also concluded that we had to strengthen digital skills at all levels.

That takes me on to say that I welcome the appointment of Gillian Keegan MP as Secretary of State for Education. She gave evidence to our committee on 13 July 2021, when she was Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills at the Department for Education. She said that she was the first apprentice who had held that role and that she was passionate about apprenticeships because it was a life-changing experience for her. She also said:

“There has always been a disconnect between the education system and employers. That has possibly accelerated in the last 20 years or so, as we have really entered the digital age … That is why the careers hubs are important, because that is working with real businesses.”


Reading that again, and the transcript of what she said to our committee 18 months ago, it seems that there is now huge potential for a change of government direction towards technical education and apprenticeships.

Finally, I draw attention to recent evidence on apprenticeships from the Learning and Work Institute. What I am about to say came in an email from the institute, so these are its words: “Research on apprenticeship outcomes shows that nearly half—47%—of the 2,500 apprentices surveyed dropped out of the training before completion. A lack of support from apprentice employers—37%—or tutor—26%—was the most common reason for non-completion, but reasons also included poor programme organisation—32%—or teaching quality—24%. Those who did not complete their apprenticeships were much less likely to find a permanent job or promotion. It is particularly important that young people at risk of becoming NEET have access to high quality apprenticeships, and steps are taken to address non-completion.” I guess the Minister will be aware of these figures, but they are important to consider so that we understand what action can be taken to alleviate the concerns that have been raised. The Learning and Work Institute also draws attention to the fact that the number of people starting apprenticeships is declining, mirroring not a decline in interest but rather in opportunities available.

Last but not least, the committee called for a new, independent young people’s commissioner to be the voice of our young people. We noted split responsibilities across several ministerial portfolios for the support of young people. We concluded that this split was unhelpful, that it is essential to avoid silos and silo working and that a young people’s commissioner would focus attention on the interests of young people directly in making representations to the Government. I hope that further thought will be given to that because there are other commissioners for other age groups, and it seems that the focused attention of a commission on young people specifically would help to bridge some of the gaps that we identified between Ministers and departments in Whitehall.

I want to borrow something that my noble friend Lord Storey said in one of our meetings. How will we know when we have succeeded with this task of encouraging apprenticeships and greater technical education? We will know when secondary schools have banners on their railings that do not talk just of their Ofsted rating or the number of GCSEs and A-levels they have secured but will also tell the public how many apprenticeships they have produced for young people. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for what she has said, and I should say that the government response to our report was extremely helpful. It defined what the issues were, which enables us to have a continuing debate on the conclusions and recommendations that the committee reached and on the Government’s actual actions to reflect what is happening outside Whitehall and Westminster.

As I have indicated, this has been a very helpful discussion and it has shown a broad unanimity of view on the issues. We will continue having this debate, because the country needs this debate. Let us look at the broad facts that we have debated tonight: 9% of young people are unemployed and there are 630,000 young people not in employment, education or training, yet there are 500,000 job vacancies in our country. As employers kept telling us, there is a huge skills mismatch, and they have great difficulty in recruiting the people they need at the levels at which they need them. So I conclude by saying that something has to change, and I hope it may be that this debate, our report and the government response will assist us in achieving the change that the country is actually asking for.

Motion agreed.