Young People: Skills (Youth Unemployment Committee Report)

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a patron of Career Connect and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It was a privilege to serve on this Select Committee, and I thank my noble friend Lord Shipley for his inclusive chairing and the Members and staff who contributed so much. The report is a must-read document, and anybody involved in education should read it.

If you happened to look at the Evening Standard on Monday, the banner headline on the front page said, “Bosses on Warpath over Foreign Staff”. The piece was about the shortage of skilled staff, particularly in the hospitality and retail sectors, and it was asking the Government to allow more overseas people to come to fill these vacancies. However, it added that the Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick,

“slapped down those demands … and insisted that employers struggling to find staff should look to the ‘domestic workforce’”.

Really? Where are we going to find these people in the domestic market when we have not been skilling them for the last decade or more? You only have to look at Cumbria, where every restaurant and shop has signs for vacancies, and at the vacancies in the construction industry. We have allowed this to happen. Why has it happened?

Let us take our schools. When I was at school—dare I say it?—there was a grammar school system for those who were academic and technical schools for those wanted to learn skills. Now we have a system where we know that half of our pupils need an academic curriculum and half need a skills-based curriculum, but we forget about those on the skills-based curriculum—they are the failures. When we suddenly wake up and realise that we must have a curriculum for all young people, then Jenrick can make those demands. We are strangling creativity in our schools, while we see the independent school sector sail on in great success.

Unemployment rates and inactivity are higher for young people than the wider population. Generally, that is the case for all countries with limited work experience, barriers to some roles by age and qualifications, and limited work readiness. At the moment, youth unemployment is historically low, but not overall: 12 OECD countries have better rates than us. For example, in the latest statistics, the UK rate is 13.4% compared with, for example, the Netherlands at only 4.6%. Of course, we must ask what the impact of Covid has been. We did not see a large growth in youth unemployment, and we must credit the furlough scheme and Kickstart which helped reduce what would have been a large growth in the figures. Young people, though, were still more impacted as they predominate in the sectors worst hit—the retail and hospitality sectors—where they were not able to work from home. There was disruption to their exams and education, a lack of work experience and an impact on confidence and teamwork skills—and let us not forget that there are significantly higher rates of unemployment for young people from ethnic backgrounds, care leavers and those with special educational needs.

Job vacancies in the past 12 to 18 months have increased significantly, so why are there so many young people out of work? Over the last decade, the number of young people not in employment, education, and training and with mental health issues has tripled. There are a third fewer apprenticeship starts for under-19 year-olds than a decade ago, and still a third of young people leave school without five good GCSE passes. Work readiness is a major challenge because education, with its significant focus on academic attainment, is not preparing young people for work; as I said earlier, we need to have a curriculum which is broad-based and which recognises the importance of skills and learning.

Areas with the highest vacancy rates are in sectors that struggle to attract staff, which is due to low pay and challenging working conditions—the care sector is the prime example. The DWP has run a number of major programmes during the last two to three years, including Kickstart and the youth offer. How effective are those schemes and how can we make them better? Kickstart has been very positive in lowering youth unemployment during the pandemic, alongside the furlough scheme, with 162,000 young people starting Kickstart. There is strong evidence of intermediate labour market schemes working where they were implemented quickly and when they worked closely with the sector, but there were more challenges, not least bureaucracy—it took longer to approve vacancies and advertise them. This is no way for young people to search for suitable roles.

The need for technology is vital. The charity of which I am a patron took three months to have vacancies approved. In Written Questions I have constantly raised issues about 16 and 17 year-olds being eligible for Kickstart. Now the figures are available: 80% of this age group were excluded as they were not receiving universal credit, yet they were not in employment, education or training.

There were major regional disparities. There were one-third fewer placements in the north-east compared with London. This is not levelling up. The north-east should have double the number of placements of the south-east. The £1.6 billion that was spent on the scheme and the subsequent underspend on Kickstart should have been avoided.

Let me turn to the so-called work coaches. How effective are DWP work coaches at supporting young people? They are clearly committed, and work coaches provide an important service. The key challenge is their capacity to support young people. Building trust and rapport are key, along with soft skills, CVs and confidence building. Unfortunately, this is not something the majority of work coaches can provide in the time available. The majority have only five to 10 minutes per young person, which is filled largely with administration and conditionality, and they have a case load of 100 to 150 young people. Training tends to focus on administration and bureaucracy, not coaching.

It would be better to have charities and other organisations supporting young people. These organisations have the time, the expertise and the confidence to support young people. Experience in youth work and careers advice is vital. It takes, for example, two years to train a careers adviser. Can the Minister tell me, when it comes to the career coaches who work for the DWP, what is their qualification for the role? What are they required to have?

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned apprenticeships and the research that showed the huge number of drop-outs. In a study of 2,500 apprentices, there was a 47% drop-out rate. That is quite concerning and worrying. I am also concerned, as I have already mentioned, by the fact that so many young people under the age of 20 are not taking up apprenticeships.

To end, we are told by the Office for Budget Responsibility that there will be a rise in unemployment in the coming year. Of course, that will disproportionately affect young people. It will have an effect on the industry and businesses that will not be able to fill the skills gap they desperately need to, and it will therefore have an effect on the growth of our economy.

I noted that the Minister for Work and Pensions—it seems that I am having a go at the DWP—sent out a letter in which she referred to “supporting the most vulnerable” through economic challenges. There is no mention in that letter of young people and how they will be supported, particularly if they are unemployed. I also noted that in the Chancellor’s so-called Statement there were extra resources for education. Sadly, there were no extra resources for further education or the skills sector.

I want to see a thriving economy, but you have a thriving economy only if you have the skill set and the people who are trained to fill those roles. We are letting our economy, our country and those young people down. I do have a hope for the future—that we have, as we have heard twice now, a Secretary of State who was an apprentice herself. More importantly, she comes from Liverpool.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the report Skills for Every Young Person and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for securing this debate and for his skilful and inclusive chairing, as has been referred to several times. I thank all members of the committee who contributed to the report and all noble Lords who have spoken today with such clarity. I was also pleased to see that the Government’s successes were recognised in the report, such as the establishment of careers hubs and the decreased rate of those not in education, employment or training for 16 to 18 year-olds in particular, which is currently one of the lowest on record at 6.4%.

As the report acknowledges, young people were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic, but I am pleased to say that through the historic levels of support, which your Lordships have acknowledged tonight, provided through the Government’s plan for jobs package, including programmes focusing on young people, we have seen a strong recovery.

A number of the report’s recommendations and of the comments from your Lordships tonight relate to school curriculums, so I will begin there. Every state-funded school must offer an ambitious curriculum that must be balanced and broadly based, promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and prepare them for wide-ranging experiences of life. I did not recognise some of the descriptions of the curriculum that your Lordships shared tonight. The curriculum currently encompasses both knowledge and skills, and the published programmes of study for national curriculum subjects demonstrate how knowledge and skills are intertwined. A very large body of evidence shows that fluency of knowledge acts as the building block for the development of skills.

Yours Lordships’ report recommends embedding digital skills within the national curriculum, so it might be worth mentioning here that that computing is a statutory subject within the national curriculum across key stages 1 to 4. There was a 16% increase in the number of students taking computer science in 2022. It was the second-fastest growth rate in STEM subjects after design and technology so, with respect, I do not recognise the description by my noble friend that there has been no innovation since the Edwardian curriculum. I am not aware of Edwardians studying computer science or design and technology.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, questioned whether design and technology is seen as important as other subjects on the curriculum. As the noble Lord knows, all state-maintained schools must teach DT to pupils between the ages of five and 14, that is in key stages 1 to 3. There is also a statutory entitlement for every pupil in key stage 4 to take DT if they want to, and the new Ofsted inspection arrangements place renewed focus on that broad, balanced and ambitious curriculum. We are also working very closely with a number of organisations, including the James Dyson Foundation, the Design and Technology Association and the Royal Academy of Engineering, to make sure that the curriculum is up to date and gives the knowledge and skills that employers want.

I turn to careers guidance, which was highlighted by the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, Lord Aberdare and Lord Shipley, as well as other noble Lords. We know that there is huge value in good careers guidance in terms of nurturing aspiration and ambition, and your Lordships rightly focused on the Gatsby benchmarks in your report. To give one example of their impact, evidence suggests that the proportion of post-16 students who are not in employment, education or training fell by 20.1% in the most disadvantaged quarter of schools since they adopted the benchmarks, and 90% of schools and colleges are currently part of a careers hub, which is accelerating the quality of careers provision. We are seeing rapid improvements in hubs and disadvantaged areas are among the best performers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, raised the important subject of careers education in primary school. We recognise the value of supporting primary schools to help children explore the world of work, and careers provision is embedded in the key stage 2 citizenship curriculum. Thanks to the Careers and Enterprise Company, we have also provided all primary schools with resources to help pupils explore the world of work and, as the noble Lords who joined me in debating the skills Bill will remember, we have allocated £2.6 million over the current spending review period to bring new programmes to support careers education in primary schools in the 55 education investment areas.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Aberdare, talked about a duty for young people to receive work experience. We absolutely agree about the importance of work experience, as is very visible in the whole approach we have taken to T-levels. A lot of work is going on in this area. There are now 400 cornerstone employers bringing together business effort and engagement with local schools and colleges and increasing the number of employer encounters for young people. We have more than 3,500 business professionals working as enterprise advisers with schools and colleges to develop their career strategies and plans for engaging with employers. If I may, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on the Gatsby benchmarks and go through the numbers. I fear I may be writing a long letter at the end of this debate, as I fear I will not have a chance to do justice to all the points raised.

The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Addington, made a really important point about the need for a culture change. The Government can do their bit but, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, parents and employers also need to play a part. We continue with our ambition to achieve equality of esteem between academic and technical routes. That will depend on the quality of the offer and on breaking down barriers between further and higher education.

The report made a number of references to bringing funding for further education more in line with that for higher education, so I hope noble Lords will be encouraged that from 2023-24 higher technical qualification student finance will be brought on a par with degrees. This is just one step, along with the lifelong loan entitlement and other reforms this Government are bringing in.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, described a top-down, soviet model of policy in this area. I think she referred to local skills improvement partnerships. I hope she will acknowledge that they are an important positive devolution of responsibility in making sure that we get the best possible interface with local areas.

As a Government, we are delighted that T-levels got off to a great start with the first cohort of students completing their courses this year with an impressive 92% pass rate. Your Lordships will be aware that every T-level includes important modules on digital skills. On the T-level transition programme, we are very clear that we need to support young people who might need a bit more help to access the programme and to ensure that that ladder of opportunity leads to higher technical qualifications.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, talked about what Labour would do in terms of a range of short courses and flexible options. I thought it sounded remarkably similar to the short courses and flexible options that we have been providing. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, touched on this. We have skills boot camps delivering flexible training for new skills in green construction, renewable energy, protection of natural resources and the transport sector, including, I hope the noble Viscount will be pleased to hear, £34 million so that 11,000 adults have been able to train as HGV drivers to meet some of the gaps there. In terms of green transport skills, I was sorry to hear about the noble Lord’s visit; I went to see a college recently which was very much focused on electric vehicles, so maybe this is just in transition.

Obviously, apprenticeships need no introduction to the House. The report made several recommendations for widening the support for apprentices under the age of 25. Currently, 53% of apprenticeship starts are by young people under this age—I was not sure that I recognised the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, cited. But we want to support even more young people to realise the benefits of apprenticeships; several references were made in the debate to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and her remarkable career starting as an apprentice. Noble Lords will also recognise the voice of my honourable friend the Minister for Skills, who formerly was chair of the Education Select Committee and has been a passionate advocate in this area. So there is no lack of enthusiasm in the department.

One of our measures is a new career starter apprenticeship campaign. We are trying to showcase apprenticeships suitable for those leaving full-time education. We know, too, that there is huge demand for degree-level apprenticeships; we are seeing year-on-year growth of apprenticeships at levels 6 and 7, and we are enabling higher education institutions to grow their delivery through the strategic priorities grant.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Storey, made the valid point about the apprenticeship completion rate, which we are very focused on. We are aiming to reach a 67% achievement rate on apprenticeship standards by the end of the 2024-25 academic year, and we have a programme of actions to make that a reality in terms of investing in a new development programme for the provider workforce, offering targeted support for employees and ensuring that apprentices get the best information, support and advice before and during the programme. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, cited the main reason. How many times can I hit this microphone? It is every time I turn the page. I apologise to your Lordships.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, suggested that levy funds should be ring-fenced for young people and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, made the case for the need to keep upskilling and reskilling our existing workforce. Clearly, our ambition is to offer opportunities in both areas.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for recognising the work that we have done on the Unit for Future Skills. I remember arriving in the department on almost my first day, sitting down with the Skills Minister and asking for the data on how we join this up—so I am personally delighted to see that we have taken this area forward. The unit is very ambitious about improving the quality and availability of data on skills and jobs, and we are making fantastic progress on that already.

I turn to green skills and I hope that the daughter of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will have an amazing career ahead of her—I am sure she will. I was very lucky to attend the COP 27 summit, really making the case for the importance of education in our sustainability agenda. We are working domestically but also, importantly, internationally, on the whole green skills agenda. Clearly, there will be global competition for green skills. We will deliver the first ever international green skills conference next year, and we are working with the further and higher education sectors, and with young people. We have been fantastically supported by the young people’s panel, industry and policymakers to deliver a conference that will really showcase the best of green skills learning and training opportunities and highlight green career paths and enhanced international partnerships. We have a very ambitious strategy on this in the department and, of course, many of our T-levels and other qualifications will underpin skills in this sector. I genuinely believe—not just for the daughter of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, but for all young people—that the scale of opportunity in an area that young people care so passionately about is really fantastic, so I hope that young people will leave equipped with the skills that they need and also with the hope that they can use them.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, questioned the impact of the Kickstart scheme. Since the launch in September 2020, over 160,000 Kickstart jobs were started by young people. Now that the scheme has closed, we are evaluating and learning from it. We built on Kickstart’s success to influence the Way to Work campaign, where we helped over 500,000 job-ready claimants, including young people, into work between January and June this year. The campaign provides claimants with more time with their work coaches and more nurtured connections with local employers to improve their employability. Through the Youth Offer, we are helping thousands of eligible 16 to 24 year-olds from all backgrounds to overcome the barriers and find work. It offers individually tailored work coach support.

The noble Lord asked about the qualifications of work coaches, who are part of the workforce. They are offered a tailored learning and development programme, so they have skills and knowledge, but also technical knowledge of the benefits to coaching, and they are encouraged to signpost customers who would benefit from expert careers advice to the National Careers Service.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I presume that is not a formal qualification but an in-house requirement.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

That is correct. That is not to say that some of them do not have formal qualifications, but they receive additional support.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, highlighted some powerful examples of children from minority communities, particularly in Tower Hamlets, and the barriers they face. I do not have the detailed data on the boroughs that she referred to, but 24% of those currently engaged in further education and skills education come from diverse backgrounds. We have an apprenticeship diversity champions network, which promotes diversity to employers and encourages people from BAME communities to consider apprenticeships. We have seen a significant rise in apprenticeship starts from those communities, and of course the noble Baroness will be aware that there has been a significant rise since 2010 in the number of 18 year-olds from ethnic minority backgrounds going to university, from 32% to 50%.

A number of noble Lords asked about funding for further education and skills in the recent Autumn Statement. I remind your Lordships that the Government have introduced major structural reforms, investing £3.8 billion in skills over the life of this Parliament.

In closing, we are rightly proud of our successes, and we absolutely recognise that some young people continue to face additional barriers to employment, including those from ethnic minority communities and those with special educational needs and disabilities. The reforms and measures I have outlined are about every young person fulfilling their potential, as well as equipping young people for the future workforce. They aim to give young people the opportunity to progress, whatever their choices and wherever they live. They are about better prospects for disadvantaged young people, because we share the commitment in your Lordships’ report that no young person should be left behind.