Adult and Further Education

Debate between Matt Rodda and Margaret Greenwood

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I am pleased to open the debate.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on the spending of the Department for Education on adult education, post-16 education, further education and colleges, in response to an application by myself and the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker).

I will begin by speaking about adult education, an area of provision that largely takes place in community settings and online. Adult education makes an important contribution to the social, economic and cultural wellbeing of the UK. It offers people opportunities for personal development, enriches lives and boosts mental health and wellbeing. It can help people to gain the skills they need to get into work, and to progress their careers once they are in work. There really is no downside—adult education is a social good.

It is vital that there are opportunities for people to benefit from adult education, no matter what their circumstances. It is important that adult education is made available in community settings and online, and that it is accessible to adults of all ages, because the needs and aspirations of people and the situations in which they wish to learn are incredibly varied.

An adult education student might be someone who gave up work in their 50s to look after an elderly relative, who has since passed away. That person could be looking to get back into work and, as their first step on that journey they might want to learn something informally to boost their confidence, where there is no requirement for them to study towards a qualification. Another person who might benefit from adult education could be someone who has retired, who wants to learn something new, such as a foreign language that they have always had an interest in but have not previously had time to study because of work, family commitments or both. Another might be a teacher who wants to retrain to be an accountant, or indeed an accountant who wants to retrain to be a teacher. In short, there are a vast number of reasons why adults might want to engage with education; the opportunities should be there for them to do so, no matter their circumstances, because when an individual thrives, their family and the community around them benefit too.

Last December, in its annual report on education spending in England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that even though total spending on adult skills is set to increase by 22% between 2019–20 and 2024–25, that reverses only a fraction of past cuts. The report goes on to say that

“total skills spending in 2024–25 will still be 22% below 2009–10 levels...Spending on classroom-based adult education has fallen especially sharply, and will still be 40% below 2009–10 levels even with the additional funding.”

An article entitled “The dismantling of a sector: Adult education in crisis”, in FE Week last September, reported

“a 50 per cent fall in adults taking qualifications at level 2 and below, alongside a 33 per cent fall in the number of adults taking level 3 qualifications since 2010.”

The impact of those cuts is devastating to the sector. It is a matter of extreme concern, and stakeholders have spoken about the “existential decline” of the adult education sector because of reductions in funding, status and public awareness of provision. It has been described as a “national tragedy” by sector leaders and experts.

The cuts could not come at a worse time. As we face a cost of living crisis, workforce shortages and a crisis in mental health, a major area of public provision that could be doing important work in addressing these issues is being brutally cut. It makes absolutely no sense. From my experience working as an adult education tutor, I know the power of adult education in community settings to improve people’s confidence, help them gain employment or help them move on to higher education. In short, it has the power to transform lives.

According to the Confederation of British Industry, 90% of the UK’s workforce—30 million people—will need to be reskilled by 2030. Further, the British Chambers of Commerce has noted that businesses are crying out for people to fill job vacancies at all skill levels. That must be the No. 1 focus for Government if they are serious about economic growth.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that it is also deeply disappointing to see the decline in the number of part-time mature university students, who also benefit from this type of learning?

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and I thank him for his intervention. Absolutely, I do agree with him.

It is vital that Government funding of adult education and skills matches the need for it. I am concerned, too, that the Government’s proposals for implementing a new further education funding and accountability system could significantly reduce opportunities for adults to learn subjects such as art, history, sociology, drama, music, and literature.

The Government have consulted on the proposal that, in future, all non-qualification provision in adult education in areas funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which accounts for about 40% of adult education provision, should meet at least one of the following objectives: achieving employment outcomes for all learners; achieving progression to further learning that moves individuals closer to the labour market for all learners; helping those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities to support their personal development and access independent living.

Although all of those objectives are hugely important, stakeholders are understandably concerned about what this might mean for people who need longer to gain the confidence or basic skills to progress into work, and for those adults who want to learn for reasons that are not necessarily employment related. The FE Week article that I referenced earlier also revealed a mass move among adult education providers towards fee-paying courses, as free languages and creative arts provision is squeezed out. It is incredibly important that we have a broad curriculum offer for adults. Failure to provide that is to ignore the great potential for personal development that is out there. Education is of immense value of itself and it is a poor Government who fail to see that.

Delivery of Public Services

Debate between Matt Rodda and Margaret Greenwood

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth).

I wish to speak in favour of the motion and to pick up on some of the serious concerns about backlog Britain, illustrating how it is linked to the long period of low growth and under-investment in key public services that goes back to the austerity period and the decisions made by Governments since 2010. Before I do, I wish to pay tribute to our public sector and public service workers, who have done the most incredible job for a very long time—for their whole careers—but particularly in the past couple of years, during this unprecedented crisis the country has faced. I am sure that all of us, across the House, want to wish them the very best and show our support for them. We respect them and think they do the most wonderful job for our communities across this country.

While I touch on the work that those workers have carried out, I want to ask Ministers to think seriously about what it feels like to be a frontline public sector worker. I ask them to imagine themselves into the position of a nurse in the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, of a local GP or of many other local public sector workers in my constituency. I ask them to think about that and respond in the fullness of time.

In particular, I ask Ministers to think about not only the pressures caused by the pandemic, but the long effect of austerity, the lack of funding and particular local problems we face in our area. For example, two GP practices have closed in my constituency and others are under severe pressure. We have a problem with looming GP retirements and other pressures arising from severe shortages of skilled staff. We have problems with numbers being reduced in Thames Valley police. Admittedly, the Government are recruiting more police, but they are doing so belatedly and there are questions as to whether they will be able to replace the officers who have been lost. There are serious problems with school funding and pressures on school budgets, because of the misunderstanding of the way in which the teachers’ pensions need to be funded by schools. There is a series of serious problems, and I ask Ministers to think deeply about that and address them when they respond to us later today. I hope they can learn the lessons of these mistakes and rethink Government policy.

In the time available, I wish to focus on one service that has caused serious problems in my constituency. I refer to the mismanagement of the passport service during the past few months, as we have come out of the pandemic. Let me illustrate some of the problems that I have encountered as a constituency MP. I have dealt with 59 cases in recent weeks of people waiting for passports, sometimes for up to 12 or 14 weeks. Those affected include not just families who want to go on holiday and rightly deserve to do so after the awful time of the pandemic, but people waiting to see terminally ill relatives and people who need to go abroad for urgent reasons. The delays are lengthy and there is a lack of communication with residents in my area, and I understand that colleagues from across the House have suffered with this as well. People are not being given updates. I have often had residents come to me saying, “I am about to go on holiday. I am due to go in two weeks but I still have not heard anything from the Passport Office.” That is not good enough and it reflects a wider lack of planning, which I want to pick up on in a moment.

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. We know that the Government want to cut 91,000 jobs from the civil service. On 2021 figures, that would mean the loss of almost a fifth of all civil servants. Those cuts could mean more than 11,000 job losses in the north-west, where my constituency is based, with 3,500 in Merseyside and 400 in Wirral. Does he agree that if the Government go ahead with these job cuts, my constituents, the region’s economy and the level of services that people receive will suffer?

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. She is highlighting clearly the issues in her area, and the same applies across the whole country. The Government are expecting public service workers to catch up and deal with an unprecedented backlog, while threatening deep cuts. As she has rightly said, many of the services provided by the civil service are in Government agencies rather than in Whitehall, which employs only a tiny proportion of the overall headcount.