Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I wholly support what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, while equally recognising that benefits are not directly a matter for the Department for Education.

There are anomalies in the way in which we treat young people. For those in approved education or approved training, child benefit continues until the child 20 years-old. Reading the list of what counts as that, it seems even more incongruous that apprenticeships are not included. For instance, it includes A-levels, Scottish Highers, NVQs up to level 3—which, of course, can be closely linked to apprenticeships—a place on the access to apprenticeships scheme, foundation apprenticeships for traineeships in Wales, the Employability Fund programmes and places on Training for Success. There is a whole raft of education and training courses on which young people continue to get their benefits, but they lose them for apprenticeships.

We know that only 10% of apprenticeships are taken up by young people on free school meals, which is surely an indicator that that is a disincentive, particularly for families, because they will lose out on additional benefits when a child goes into an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship salary on minimum wage may be barely over £3 an hour, so the loss of child benefit and tax credits may be a significant penalty for that family to bear.

The National Union of Students said:

“If apprenticeships are going to be the silver bullet to create a high-skilled economy for the future, the government has to go further than rhetoric and genuinely support apprentices financially to succeed”.


We urge the Minister, in the interests of joined-up government, to talk to his colleagues in the benefits department to see whether something can be done to ensure that disadvantaged young people do not feel that this is a major disincentive to taking up apprenticeships.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I spoke on this issue at Second Reading, so I just reiterate what my colleagues have said. It seems strange that benefits are available to young people until the age of 18, so we can have a university student who has a couple of lectures and a couple of tutorials a week, if they are lucky, who gets the benefit, and a young person doing an apprenticeship, where 20% of the time should be for training, who loses that money. As we heard from my noble friend Lady Garden, only 10%—let us underline that—of apprentices come from those entitled to free school meals. If we really believe in social mobility, we should be asking why it is only 10% and whether finance is a handicap.

The National Society of Apprentices said in its written evidence:

“It seems incongruous to us that structural barriers exist to disincentivise the most disadvantaged from taking up an apprenticeship”.


We need to take those comments on board. I realise this is slightly beyond the scope of the Bill, but it would be helpful if, in his reply, the Minister could suggest that we meet his colleagues outside the Committee and talk about this issue because if there is a resolution, it would really help those people in society whom we must support.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the points that have been made. I shall speak on one narrow issue. I was surprised to learn that an apprenticeship is not an approved form of learning. I assume that, when the Institute for Apprenticeships recognises these apprenticeships, they will automatically be an approved form of learning along with all the others. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will cover whether an apprenticeship is an approved form of learning and whether, when the Institute for Apprenticeships recognises the range of apprenticeships, they will come into that category.

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[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I will focus on just one area because, as I understand it, the various bodies set out in the amendment each have a different role. When we debated this on the first day in Committee, the Minister told us that the body that was going to look at the quality of apprenticeships was Ofsted and that it was going to work on a risk-based approach. I told him that I understood the approach but would welcome some clarification of how it is going to apply. He said that he would get back to us on that. As far as I am concerned, there are two things here. I support the thrust of the amendment, in that we need to be clear about the roles and responsibilities, but my overall concern is ensuring that we deliver quality apprenticeships so that the brand has a good reputation among teachers, potential apprentices and parents. If the Minister has replied to this point, I have not yet seen it. Is he in a position to tell us how this risk-based approach will apply to apprenticeships?

Given that we are looking to drive up the number of SMEs involved, the risk will not be with the larger organisations with well-established reputations, such as Rolls-Royce, BT, British Aerospace and a whole host of others that have been mentioned before. We know that people who go into those organisations will get a quality apprenticeship. That is not the problem. The problem will be in small and medium-sized concerns. Given that the success of this enterprise in driving up significantly the number of apprenticeships will depend on ensuring that we embrace more of those organisations in providing apprenticeships, a lot more than currently do, this is not an insignificant issue.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, this is a very important amendment. The Government have set an ambitious target of 3 million apprentices, and it is good to have a target to work towards. However, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young, those have to be quality apprenticeships. In a sense, I would rather have 2.5 million apprentices, knowing that there was real quality in the education and training.

I went to look at the apprenticeship scheme run by the BBC. I was struck by the diversity of the apprentices and the quality of the training and education component of the scheme. Young people deserve quality education and training. It is not enough to say, “Here are some books—go and sit in that corner. Here is a day off—go and learn that”. Somebody has to direct the training and education. If a scheme is to work, we need to make sure that somebody is responsible for that quality.

I hope the Minister will not mind me saying that, when we met before the Bill, I raised this question with him. He said then that Ofsted would be “sampling” some of the providers. To me, that is not good enough. We have to be absolutely sure that every apprentice gets only the best.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

I support the amendment. I feel that, in all this, there is tension between what the Bill would like to see and what the Bill will be able to achieve. I keep looking for measures of enforcement, and not just because I am a native head girl or predisposed to police-type solutions. The history of apprenticeships in this country shows that they have mostly failed because of the employers. Indeed, why would it not be because of the employers? They are in charge; they are the ones with the power.

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[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of points on these amendments. First, as I said at Second Reading, I very much welcome the desire and requirement to have learners themselves represented in the governance of the institute. I welcome also the fact that the Government have announced an apprentice panel for the institute, but I think it would be good if that was a statutory requirement in the Bill.

Secondly, it is important we ensure that the bodies creating the standards are employer-led but, at the same time, represent a cross-section of organisations. However, there is a further point to make on that. Yes, we should have SME representation, but that is easier said than done. Most SMEs find it hard to devote the time, resource and energy to being involved in these quite complicated standard development processes. I am very interested to hear the Government’s thinking on how the views of SMEs—which, after all, deliver more than half of all apprenticeships—can be represented in a way that is comparable to the others that will be represented.

I very much agree that independent training providers need to be subject to accountability and scrutiny, and that learners need to know who they can complain to. However, at the same time, I believe that independent training providers deliver a very substantial proportion of the training needed for apprenticeships, and we should be rather careful that we are not killing that golden-egg-laying goose. It is very important to have the right balance. Again as I said at Second Reading, I have a feeling that the role of independent training providers, including commercial training providers, is not very well reflected in the Bill as it stands. It is a key role and we should make sure we understand how it is going to be delivered in a way that meets suitable standards and scrutiny.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. FE Week seems to be getting quite a few mentions. I came across a piece on training providers by Peter Cobrin, who runs the Apprenticeships England Community Interest Company, which is important to highlight. He says that training providers feel,

“vulnerable, unrepresented, unsupported, unprotected, exploited and undervalued”.

Let us not forget that there are some very good training providers, just as in higher education there are some very good private providers and colleges. However, quite frankly, some need examining carefully. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, it is important to remember that many of the people who go to these private providers take out big loans, and if that private provider collapses or reforms, they are left. That is not good enough. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said it is important that accountability catches up with them. I hope that, following her wise words, we might look more carefully at this area between now and Report.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support these amendments and the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. Equally, I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and my noble friend Lord Storey say about getting the balance of this right. That is important.

I have one small thing to say on Amendment 18. I agree that it is almost impossible to get SMEs to participate meaningfully in these sorts of activities, however much you wish them to do so. The federation can sometimes be helpful in providing for somebody to speak, but individual SMEs very seldom have the time or interest to take part. In Amendment 18, proposed new paragraph (b) refers to, as well as employers,

“at least one person engaged in delivering relevant education linked to the standard being assessed”.

It is important that this group of people includes trainers and awarding bodies, who bring a dimension to these affairs. To have a broad range of people within this group would be particularly important.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I am a patron of an awarding body, ASDAN. Also, as a Minister, I spent three years building a clear, recognised qualification in the form of diplomas, which then got killed off after a huge amount of time, effort and money were spent trying to develop them, although some of them certainly seemed to be well received—engineering comes to mind.

I paid close attention to what the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said. I respect the work that she and the Sainsbury commission did. I certainly agree that we need these to be clearly recognised qualifications, but there are a number of ways to get to that point. I remember well the SATS marking crisis through which I had to navigate as a Minister. We had a problem with the company carrying out the marking. We ended up having to dismiss it from the contract and had to re-let the contract. We found that there was only one awarding body with the capacity to do that work. Edexcel effectively had us over a barrel. Happily, it was a responsible organisation and did not want to exploit the monopoly position in which it found itself, but it is really dangerous if you find yourself without the competitive capacity for different people to respond as and when circumstances change.

I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has done by raising this issue and giving us an opportunity to explore it. Clearly, there will be general capacity if different awarding bodies are awarded the contracts for different groups, but there would remain issues about their specialism in the subjects attached to each of those groups. My instinct is that the Sainsbury review might have got it wrong in this case. It may be that I just do not understand well enough what the department has in mind in terms of the model. I may not understand the extent to which it wants to specify the inputs into the qualification, how much it is concerned with the outcomes, how detailed it wants to be, how much it wants to specify the pedagogy, or whether it is thinking that these are wrappers in which you could put other qualifications, so that there is a single overarching contract-awarding body. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten me in his response or in some other way.

As the Committee has discussed, we must put quality first. As I keep saying, we must ensure that we have agility. The time it takes to develop qualifications reduces agility, and a seven-year contract makes me very anxious about how that agility can be preserved as skills needs change in the economy. I am particularly keen that we embed in the design the potential for innovation in assessment and awarding. I see innovative practice going on around the world, particularly by employers using digital badges that can have wrappers put around them to keep up-to-date with skills and the value of an employers’ own qualification, with a meta-qualification on top through the wrapper mechanism. It is crucial that we allow for that. The notion of a single contract for these qualifications, thereby reducing competition, makes me worry profoundly about innovation. I find myself, as a Labour Peer, arguing with a Conservative Government that we want competition. I hope that the Minister will revert to instinct, listen and agree competition is good to improve delivery and agility in the system.

[Lord Storey]

I remember that my nursery nurses were terribly upset when their NNEB qualifications went and they became NVQ level 3. They were devastated, so there is something in a name and perhaps in a bit of tradition. I am a bit torn. I understand the Sainsbury review and the Government saying: let us create and agree a standard for the different pathways and maintain it. That is the qualification we will have so, presumably, various organisations can bid for it and, if they win the contract, the Government will ensure that they maintain the quality and standard.

However, as has been said, there is something about having competition. You have to look only at GCSEs, where the Secretary of State at the time wanted to have a single provider. There was a sort of rebellion against that and it did not come to pass. Schools and young people themselves can choose which awarding body to go for. Different awarding bodies suit pupils for different reasons—the content may match their study. We must think carefully about this. It is important for parents, young people and employers. Getting the name right is important but sometimes people also like letters after the name—there is a later amendment from my noble friend Lady Garden about that. I am caught on this, but I hope that we can explore the best way forward.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

I am responsible for 2,000 degree-level apprentices and about the same number of others. At the moment, we do what the employer wants. If the employer arrives and says: “I would like the formal training to have these outcomes”, we say, “Right”, then we discuss it and bid for it. I had been assuming that we could adjust to the new regime. If the Institute for Apprenticeships stated the outcomes that it wanted, we could teach to those outcomes because that is what we do. We would be able, in essence, to do a wraparound to suit a particular employer, which would include the vital bits that the Institute for Apprenticeships wanted. I am a little puzzled if we are to be told that we all have to teach the same thing on, say, the finance course by the bit of the Institute for Apprenticeships that is working out finance training. At the moment, let us say that KPMG tells us how it wants us to do finance training. We would do that but if someone else wanted it to be slightly different, our competitive advantage over the years has been built on adjusting to do a different sort of finance training.

I am not quite sure where I am going with this, but are we providers still to be allowed variation in any way if an employer asks us to do it slightly differently, provided we include a certain number of outcomes and standards, as set out by the institute? To take an example from my experience, with our graduate law course we made our name by introducing a City law course that the City wanted. “Wait”, we said, “we’ll do that”. Of course, it is all the same law but it was specialist. We did that and not some other bits of law. I can imagine that being the outcome still: some City firms want varieties of law taught that nobody else cares about, as in shipping law, and some accountants want things that nobody else much cares about taught, as in shipping finance. Are we to end up with an agreed set of standards to which we must adhere, but around which we can wrap something that employers might want, or not? I am arguing for a setting of outcomes and standards by the institute but with a little deviation allowed, provided those apprenticeships include the basic standards and outcomes. Will the Minister tell me about that?

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[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I support the amendments and shall speak specifically to Amendment 20. When I ask employers what they value most about young apprentices, the qualities are what I often hear referred to here as soft skills, but they are not, really they are essential skills. They are the skills of being able to turn up on time regularly, work as part of a team, show enthusiasm and so on. Often, ironically, the complaints that you get from employers are about those who are technically well-qualified but lack those essential skills. This amendment is about creating flexibility and recognising that there are young people who will, for a variety of reasons explained today, find it difficult, as my noble friend Lord Hunt said, to go through the demoralising impact of resits for qualifications that will not assess their innate capabilities, as my noble friend Lady Cohen described. I hope that we will get a constructive response.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 20. Yes, it is absolutely right that we do all in our power to ensure that young people are numerate and literate. It seems reasonable to say that we want them to get to a certain level in mathematics, but that should not be a barrier to everything else. Special needs have not been mentioned. Are we to insist that children who have particular special needs or an aversion to numbers are to be included? We would not expect children who are dyslexic to get to certain standards in literacy because of the severity of their dyslexia.

We have heard about Travellers and immigrants, but there are young people for whom the system—perhaps poor teaching—has not helped them to get it. We then have this whole re-sit culture, and they get more and more fearful of failing and we do not want to label people as failures. I enjoyed the argument and think the word “flexibility” is so important. I know young people who have been taken on by employers, and the employer has said: “Well, they’ve got problems with numeracy and literacy, but they really sparked at this particular job”. Some of them have gone on to take some qualifications later. Let us not label people, let us have flexibility and do all we can to make sure that young people get to a certain level—“C”—in mathematics, but that should not be the be all and end all.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for the amendments and welcome the opportunity to debate them. I fully understand why the noble Lords, Lord Watson, and Lord Hunt, are supporting Amendment 20. Having a sound grasp of English, maths and digital skills is fundamental to getting ahead in work and life. Raising literacy and numeracy levels at all stages of education, including post-16, is essential and remains an absolute priority.

We recognise that current requirements are still low by international standards, and we believe that individuals should have higher aspirations. In the longer term, as the quality of pre and post-16 English and maths teaching and associated learner outcomes improve, the Government should raise maths and English requirements to reflect those of higher-performing international technical education systems.

Since we made it a condition of funding, all 16 to 19 year-olds beginning a study programme who have not achieved an A* to C GCSE in English and maths must continue to study these subjects until they do so, unless specific special educational needs or disabilities prevent them. I will repeat that to underline it: unless specific special educational needs or disabilities prevent them from doing so, so there are exceptions. This has resulted in thousands more students securing these GCSEs by the age of 19. The OECD has commended us on our reforms and, working with schools, colleges and employers, we will build on them.

We will do so by implementing the Sainsbury panel’s recommendations on English and maths. We have accepted the panel’s recommendation that there should be a single set of English and maths exit requirements governing college-based technical education and apprenticeships, and we will continue to require all 16 to18 year-olds to study English and maths if they have yet to achieve GCSE A* to C in these subjects.

The Government consider that English and maths requirements should be included as steps towards occupational competence. As well as good literacy and numeracy, everyone needs an essential set of digital skills to succeed in the modern workplace. Digital skills requirements should be tailored and groups of persons will be in the lead to specify digital skills that are required for entry into particular groups of skilled occupations.

We believe that there should be a minimum level of English or maths which all individuals must achieve ahead of securing technical education certification, as is already the case for apprentices. We will work with the institute to ensure that occupation-specific English and maths requirements are incorporated into each route.

Before I turn to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, I repeat the point about exceptions. We are talking about people with special needs and so on, where it may be just too difficult. The noble Lord spoke about the resit culture, and we absolutely understand that. However, in an environment where we are offering young people the opportunity through apprenticeships for genuine employment in the world of work, there is a hope and desire that those people should understand that basic core skills in English, maths and digital skills will be essential for their future. That is not least because we all know that, in the current world of work, people change jobs a lot and are not necessarily going to follow the same role for ever. Therefore, they need that basic requirement to support themselves into their future.

[Lord Storey]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply, but how will these exceptions be decided? Will they have to have an education healthcare plan or will they be notified by the school? What will be the mechanism for exceptions?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Lord raises a good question. I do not know the answer, so I will write to him on that.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I hope that I can help the noble Lord, Lord Young. That would not be a barrier to an apprenticeship. We are saying that they would have to continue to study through the apprenticeship and stay in that process in order to receive their certification.

[Lord Storey]

That is very helpful. So it is not a barrier to them doing an apprenticeship but they would be studying for their GCSE maths at the same time. Would the family then be entitled to tax credits because the young person is studying maths?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, makes an interesting point, but I certainly would not want to commit on that. Let me clarify: they would study and do these resits, as we have been calling them, through the apprenticeship process—they would do them at the same time.

I want to attempt to reply to my noble friend Lord Lucas, who asked what would happen if awarding organisations have business overseas. The answer is that the institute can grant a licence back to the awarding organisation for use of the qualification documents—in other words, for use abroad. If there is an existing qualification for an awarding organisation that is out of the institute’s scope then the institute holds no copyright on that.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, for tabling Amendments 21 and 25. I appreciate why she has put forward these amendments, which would allow awarding organisations to retain ownership of the copyright of documents under the new reforms. However, with respect, I cannot agree to them for the following reasons.

First, the qualification is to be approved by the institute, so it is right that the institute is the ultimate owner of the copyright. This will ensure that it can carry out its functions, including awarding licences for the delivery of the qualifications. Also, as there are likely to be multiple contributors to each qualification, the amendments are likely to make it impractical for the institute to carry out its functions to approve the new qualification. All contributors are likely to want a say in matters that relate to their particular part of the qualification. The institute should have the final say if the qualification is to be approved by it.

Secondly, the amendments would be likely to stifle competition once the licence comes to an end. Those awarding organisations whose documents have been approved by the institute would be in a far stronger position than those who were unsuccessful to rebid for a licence. Of course, the authors of documents that make up a technical education qualification should decide whether to give their consent to the copyright being transferred to the institute before the qualification is approved. If they do not, the institute can remove that document from the qualification. That is provided for in the Bill: I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to the provisions in new Section A2DA which provide safeguards for both the institute and the awarding organisations.

Furthermore, awarding organisations do not have to submit a bid to the institute for the new approved qualifications if they do not like the arrangements offered. Under the reforms, it is expected that awarding organisations will go through a comprehensive procurement process before being granted a licence to deliver a qualification for an occupation or group.