Lord Watson of Invergowrie
Main Page: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)Work: Lifelong Learning
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
To move that this House takes note of the case for a comprehensive strategy for life-long learning and adult re-skilling in response to the challenges of technology, productivity, and the changing nature of work.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to have this opportunity of initiating a debate on what I believe to be a very important aspect of the Government’s legislative programme. That applies to any Government, no matter their colour, because without a coherent strategy to prepare for a strong and expanding economy at least for the decade ahead, no Government can deliver sustained prosperity for their people.
Last week the Chancellor announced that, his party’s Governments since 2010 having consistently failed to meet their debt-reduction targets, and with current debt at 86.5% of GDP, he would react to projections for productivity growth in the economy being revised down to 1.5% by adopting what by any standards are Keynesian principles: increasing spending and borrowing substantially over the next two years. I would say, “Well, better late than never”, to that.
Those projections came from the Office for Budget Responsibility, but several analysts argued that it actually overestimated the capacity of British businesses to invest in new equipment, processes and skills to drive up productivity. In the UK, productivity growth has flatlined since the financial crisis, leaving it behind all but two of the G7 leading industrial nations. Some industries are more productive than others. In the UK, manufacturing firms are among the most efficient, whereas the services sector operates at below-average productivity. So, what can be done to reverse that cycle of decline?
I believed—naively, no doubt—that it was no coincidence that the Government had responded to this debate by choosing today to publish their industrial strategy White Paper. What I had not anticipated was that they would respond with a double whammy, because just an hour before this debate began, I learned that the Government Office for Science has also clambered onto the stage. Future of Skills & Lifelong Learning is so hot off the presses that it is not yet available in the Printed Paper Office, but it was published today. It is a comprehensive evaluation of this country’s human capital and identifies five key challenges. Unfortunately, I have barely had time to skim its executive summary, far less delve into its 112 pages, on top of the 250 pages of the White Paper that has just been discussed.
When offered the opportunity to choose a subject for debate this is what we at Labour identified as a priority, and that was before it was known that these two important documents would appear today. This debate really ought to have been scheduled by the Government, perhaps for next week, to enable noble Lords to scrutinise both weighty publications properly and make informed comment. With the less than heavy current legislative programme, the Chief Whip might have been asked by Ministers to make space, but apparently not. That is to be regretted.
The White Paper consists of a number of initiatives that appeared in last week’s Budget speech, but it contains little that will help give businesses the certainty or incentives they need to invest in the face of the confusion surrounding the Government’s negotiation of our departure from the EU. It has “five foundations”, the second of which concerns people, which is the one most relevant to this debate. One of the certainly admirable aims under that heading is to:
“Establish a technical education system that rivals the best in the world to stand alongside our world-class higher education system”.
I fully support that. But in order for that to be achieved, colleges need to be properly funded to allow them to deliver world-class education and training. That means facilities, funding for students and a reboot of capital money to help ensure that all college buildings are fit for a modern workforce. I fear that that is not currently the case.
What other detail there is in the White Paper concentrates, it seems to me, on a relatively few elite industries in which the UK already has an advantage. That will not necessarily help the millions of people who work in low-productivity and low-wage sectors, such as retail, hospitality and social care, or those based outside the golden triangle made up by London, Oxford and Cambridge. Although the White Paper contains some welcome measures, it does not measure up to what is required to return the UK to the position where it has a consistently healthy and growing economy. According to a report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development this month, the UK is full of highly educated workers, with skills that unfortunately do not match the jobs available. The report maintains that as many as 40% of workers are either overskilled or underqualified for their jobs, while the same percentage are working in industries or jobs which are different from the sector in which they trained.
Too often, the OECD says, employers put too little effort into training workers in the right skills, and they should work more closely with the education system to ensure that school pupils and college and university students achieve the skills that are actually required by the economy. In particular, workers often lack verbal, cognitive reasoning, social and complex problem-solving skills. At an earlier age, rates of teenage literacy in England are lower than those of other OECD nations, and, indeed, it is the only nation in the OECD in which rates of literacy for 16 to 24 year-olds are lower than those of people aged 55 and over. In his Budget speech last week the Chancellor talked of creating an advanced skills economy. If they lack basic reading skills then people will be unable to gain the work skills that the economy so badly needs. School and college libraries help students to discover reading and to develop digital skills. As the economy braces itself for the chill winds of life outside the European Union, the decline of libraries as a result of the Government’s austerity cuts has put such skills development at great risk. To describe that decline as a false economy hardly does it justice, and it must be halted.
A lack of engineering, science and maths skills is a particular issue. The OECD characterises this as a cultural problem in the UK, with little having changed over the past four decades. It highlights the good news—that a very large number of students gain high-level qualifications—but qualifies it by pointing out that more needs to be done to make those qualifications relevant to work, and to keep training people who are in work to make sure that their skills improve and do not become outdated. A Labour Government borrowing to invest in our infrastructure, tackling low productivity and thus growing our economy, will be able properly to address those economic factors.
Lifelong learning is, of course, the key. We heard it just last week from the Open University’s vice-chancellor, Peter Horrocks, who said:
“The current generation of students will face the reality that lifelong and career learning will be an economic necessity. Rising automation and great strides in artificial intelligence will destroy jobs and create new skilled roles that will require some form of formal higher qualification, but not necessarily full degrees”.
That is why a prosperous learning and earning higher education sector is needed now more than ever. Not only does it increase productivity and regional skills, it promotes social mobility, enabling education to be for the many and not the few. Yet the market for part-time higher education in England is currently in crisis. Learning and earning is central to economic success and to delivering on the Government’s oft-quoted aim of enabling social mobility. Part-time higher education and distance learning should be an essential part of the response to the two fundamental economic challenges that the UK now faces: low productivity and skills shortages.
These challenges cannot be met by relying on young people alone; the gaps are too wide and too urgent. All adults of working age, whatever their background or location, need regular opportunities to upskill or reskill throughout our lengthening working lives. Learning and earning will make the biggest and quickest difference for the individual, the employer, the regions and ultimately the country.
Report after report and organisations from various sectors all make these points. One of these was the government-commissioned Made Smarter review, published last month. It may have understated the case with its recommendation that 1 million workers in the next five years will need to be reskilled and upskilled.
Although there is some government action, it seems piecemeal. The March Budget announced a £40 million fund to pilot lifelong learning initiatives; and a few weeks ago, phase 1, a £10 million flexible learning fund to support projects that deliver learning to adults in ways that are flexible and easy to access, was put out to tender. There was some movement in the right direction in last week’s Budget, such as the announcement of a national retraining scheme in partnership with the CBI and the TUC. It prioritised the delivery of high-quality digital skills courses to adults, and it is essential that more detail on this emerges quickly. It was pleasing to see recognition given to the role of trade unions, with additional resources for Unionlearn to continue to support workplace learning.
Apprenticeships have a vital place at the heart of the response to skills shortages, not least for small firms. The apprenticeship levy and the expansion of the Institute for Apprenticeships to encompass technical education in its title from April are both positive moves. But there is a danger that, with the Government clearly obsessed with the target of 3 million apprenticeships by 2020, quantity will triumph over quality, with not enough apprenticeships above level 2. There are worrying signs, with last week’s announcement by the Department for Education that there has been a 59% drop in the number of apprenticeships in the last three months of the academic year, compared with the same time a year ago. The Federation of Small Businesses said that those figures confirmed its fears and that the apprenticeship levy was not solely to blame for the drop. Of course, very few small firms pay the levy and these businesses will be essential to the Government reaching their target of 3 million apprenticeships. The FSB reported that although many small firms are committed to apprenticeships, too many remain overwhelmed by the complexities of the system, calling for small firms to be involved in the design of the new apprenticeship standards. I really hope that the Government listen to these concerns from some of those involved at the sharp end of apprenticeship provision.
Part-time higher education—what I referred to earlier as earning and learning—is in crisis in England and real urgency is required in response by the Government, because part-time and mature students are the real casualties of the 2012 higher education funding changes in England. Overall, there are now fewer people from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university than ever before. That cannot be denied. because two weeks ago the Universities Minister, Jo Johnson MP, admitted in a Written Answer to a Question from Daniel Zeichner MP that the number of part-time English-domiciled undergraduate students from low-participation areas who entered English higher education institutions for 2015-16 represented a 47% decrease from the figure for 2011-12. Of course, that is directly related to the increase in loans.
There is now recognition, it seems, in Tory circles of the extent of the problem. Last month the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who I regret is unable to participate in this debate. because I valued his contributions to the Higher Education and Research Act, even though I often did not agree with him, gave evidence before the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House. He said it was “very regrettable” how the new system of loans had put part-time students off since 2012. With remarkable candour he said:
“I have to accept that it is one of my biggest regrets about my time as Minister … I accept that the loan model has not delivered for them”.
The question is what action the Government will take to address that problem, because part-time students are not a homogeneous group. They are people in work who want to gain a new skill, and have family responsibilities, mortgages and competing demands on their time; some have disabilities which mean they can study only through part-time distance learning. They are people living in towns and cities throughout the country as well as in rural areas. This is not a small student group: one in five first-year students in England study part-time. Higher education policies need to work for them too, not just for 18 year-olds studying full-time at university.
It is a fact that those who have been most deterred from study by the trebling of tuition fees are not those 18 year-olds, but older students, especially disadvantaged students. The Government have introduced maintenance loans for part-time students, although not all will qualify until 2019-20. Meanwhile, the downward trend continues, partly because part-time students are far more debt-averse and employer-sponsored degrees have declined. The steepest drop in part-time higher education in England has been among those aged 30 to 49—people of prime working age. This puts at risk the UK Government’s efforts to ensure that we have the skills base to support the economy outside the EU. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that. Part-time higher education must play a key role in developing a strategy for lifelong learning and adult reskilling.
A further barrier to adult education and lifelong learning is that the alternatives to full-time residential higher education are underdeveloped. To deliver a dynamic adult skills system and establish a culture of lifelong learning, the single most significant barrier to learning throughout life must be addressed—finance. Young adults who opt for courses at level 4 or 5 have no access to maintenance support. There has been a serious decline in the number of mid-career adults taking higher education courses and there are low numbers taking higher education courses below degree level. This may be holding back not only the prospects for individuals but the skills available to employers and our public services.
Organisations such as the Association of Colleges, the Open University and the Institute for Public Policy Research have all advocated the use of personal learning accounts to encourage more adults to invest in learning and training. This requires long-term investment as well as a culture change at all age levels, and one means would be to develop learning accounts that learners could use to finance their study. We believe that this option is very much worth investigating and I hope the Government will do so. But even with this shift, there will be a significant challenge to encourage people to invest in higher levels of learning, particularly at levels 3, 4 and 5, where many of the skills shortages are becoming increasingly worrying.
Further education colleges will play a key role in this. They already provide academic, technical and professional education for young people, adults and employers. Yet public investment in colleges has been hit harder than any other part of the education system in the past decade. Properly resourced by a Labour Government, they will build on their reputation as engines of social mobility, helping businesses improve productivity and thus driving economic growth, while being rooted in and committed to their communities.
At both local and regional levels there is a need to provide careers information, advice and guidance, making greater use of labour market intelligence and mid-life reviews. More employers need to offer opportunities to adults, particularly those who are older and keen to remain active in employment.
Labour is committed to investing in lifelong learning through the creation of a national education service for England. Like the National Health Service, this will be a cradle-to-grave provision, free at the point of use and built on the principle that every child and every adult matters. A Labour Government, borrowing to invest in our infrastructure, tackling low productivity and thus growing our economy, will be able properly to address those economic factors. We will enable a learning and earning higher education sector which will lead to increased productivity and regional skills, enabling education to be the vehicle for a secure, productive working life for the many and not just the few. I beg to move.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this fine debate. There is an old saying that we go for quality, not quantity. The quantity has not been great but the quality certainly has been of all the contributions in this debate.
I reinforce a point I made in my opening remarks that was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—namely, I think we will need to come back to these issues fairly soon. I suggest that we bracket both the industrial strategy and the other paper, Future of Skills & Lifelong Learning, published today by the Government Office of Science, because they clearly have a lot in common. We could do with an opportunity to have a longer debate with more noble Lords being given longer than just a few days’ notice, as happened with this debate, as was inevitably the case because of the way in which it developed. I again thank all noble Lords.
My noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya, whose experience is remarkable and who certainly brings a great deal of weight to this debate, says that the scale of reskilling is enormous, and I think that that sets the parameters for the debate—and, indeed, it is. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, was quite right to highlight the fact, as did some other noble Lords, that apprenticeships are key. I throw her quote back at her—I hope I have got it right—“If we do not get apprenticeships right, we will not have success in improving skills”. I fundamentally agree with that. She also said that the high quality of adult apprenticeships should be at the centre of the industrial strategy, and I am very much behind that as well.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester made an important point when he said that young people will need several careers, as they face a much longer working life than their parents or grandparents had. It seems that not all employers are yet fully aware of that; to some, age is still a disincentive to employment. Reskilling and retraining more than once in any working life will become second nature—it will certainly need to be. He also made a point about the access of adults to T-levels, which, as the Minister just said, is widely accepted and necessary.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Touhig for the work he does and the comments he made about those on the autism spectrum. Earlier this month I met with the National Autistic Society to talk about a broad range of issues; what an impressive organisation it is in the work it does and its ability to spread knowledge and awareness of the needs of people on the autism spectrum. Of course, the same applies to many with other conditions as well. My noble friend’s point about stepping stones into a job is important. I will certainly do what I can to advance that in terms of my remit, as it is important that people have the opportunity. The figures he quoted on the percentage of those on the autism spectrum who are in employment are quite worrying and surely can be increased.
I bow to the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, in relation to his experience in helping to deliver lifelong learning. I was struck by the point that he made—that lifelong learning is not just about employability, it is about the quality of life. Of course it is. He also regretted the decoupling of education and employment, if I picked him up correctly. I can see what he means, although I do not think it is unlikely to be reversed any time soon. However, I noted that immediately prior to this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, speaking on the Statement on the industrial strategy, talked about ending the silo mentality in seeking to deliver that strategy. I very much hope the Government will follow through on that. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, will know from experience, that is often easier to talk about than to deliver—there are often even departmental rivalries. But I hope that given the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, the Government will work to overcome that. I may have missed this in the Minister’s remarks—I apologise to him if I did—but the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, suggested that an action plan should be produced on lifelong learning, partly in response to the industrial strategy. I am not sure whether the Minister responded to that but, if he did not, I think that such a plan would be a very good idea and I urge him to consider one.
My noble friend Lord Young has a great deal of experience in skills and employability. He highlighted an interesting point on the disparity in funding between higher and further education. I think that that is a problem and has been for many years. As I said in my earlier comments, funding for further education colleges has been hit harder than funding for any other sector of education over the past 10 years. I hope there will be some refocusing of resources to fit the Government’s stated intention of ensuring that people get qualifications and skills that are relevant to the needs of the economy. As many have stated, that is often not the case now. To simply get a university degree—I would never disparage that in any sense; there is always something positive in it—may not necessarily tailor people for the needs of the economy now and in the immediate future.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, commented on the fact that all my education was gained in Scotland, while now I have responsibility for education in England. I can tell him that after more than two years in the job I am still very much on a learning curve. However, I am now domiciled in London and have the benefit of having a son in school in London, so I am getting day-to-day updates on the English education system, which, as the noble Lord will know, is in many ways quite different from that in Scotland. The noble Lord talked of inequality, which is an important issue, and we talk about social mobility. The question of inequality is in many ways the thread that runs through what we have been discussing for the past hour and half. In allocating resources for training and retraining for employment opportunities, it is very much the case that a good education will almost always be the gateway to employment, and those who do not have that—perhaps from disadvantaged communities—do not have the chance to get into the workforce in the first place, far less retrain and refocus their employability. We need to bear that in mind. I therefore very much welcome the Minister’s comment that the Government are to publish a careers strategy early next year—or sometime next year; there is not much time left in this one—with an emphasis on social mobility. That is to be welcomed.
Finally, to some extent repeating a point I made earlier, a prosperous learning and earning higher education sector is needed now more than ever, not only because it increases productivity and regional skills but because it promotes social mobility. The Government should facilitate a system for adults that encourages that lifelong learning and tackles the basic skills, because the economic success of our country in the years ahead undoubtedly depends upon it.