Adult Learning

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure as ever to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am delighted to have secured this debate on an issue vital to the future of the British economy: skilling up our adult work force. I am particularly pleased to stand here and highlight to the Minister the excellent provision we have in Hackney. I am proud to represent Hackney community college, our local further education college, which really is what it says on the tin. It provides education and training to a community of people, many of whom did not have the chance the first time around. Indeed, some may have arrived in the country without the benefit of skills, education and training in the countries they came from. They are ambitious to achieve, ambitious to learn and ambitious to work, and the college provides great support to them.

I am aware that many other colleagues want to speak, so I will try to keep my opening remarks as brief as is reasonable. I want to talk about funding, in particular for FE, and about apprenticeships and skills. We all know that funding for over-18s has always been complex because the bureaucracy of Government means that, sadly, funding falls between at least two Departments and sometimes more. The Minister has a challenge in that he represents only one section of the funding for adult education. I appreciate that limitation, but I hope that, in his role, he has the clout to bang heads together for the joined-up government that every party strives for. That is particularly important in adult learning, because if the system does not work, learners fall through the gap as well as providers—I will touch on the challenges for providers as well.

Tracking funding and ensuring that the provider and the learner can deliver the contract between them is difficult, because Departments focus on their narrow financial interests rather than the whole experience of the learner or the needs of the employers, which are critical. That was stark in a previous Westminster Hall debate, when we discussed how the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills had cut funding for over 18s—we had a different Minister at that time. That debate aroused cross-party concern about both the impact on the viability of education providers and the disproportionate impact on many 18-year-olds. That debate can be seen as a proxy for some of the challenges faced by many other learners across the age ranges.

Funding has also been catastrophically reduced over the years. Between 2009 and 2015 alone, there is a 35% reduction in the adult skills budget—the core budget for FE—and during a similar period, the number of people aged 19 and over participating in Government-funded training, excluding higher education, has dropped from 3.7 million to 3.28 million, so nearly half a million fewer people are getting their learning and training provided.

Will the Minister tell us whether the Government have any plans to introduce more ring-fencing of budgets, or will they allow local colleges and providers to meet local needs? Hackney is an exemplar of the latter: the college embraced the needs of the Olympics, when it provided training for the catering—it has an excellent training section—and is embracing the needs of Tech City, where it is pioneering its apprenticeships, working with employers. That has served the needs of local businesses and therefore, crucially, enhanced the employment prospects of students in the local area. Many other colleges up and down the country can and do provide similarly, but flexibility is important.

The adult skills budget is the main source of funding for FE colleges, but it is not the only source for adult learning. I believe that a strong, effective FE sector is vital to Britain’s future, but those colleges face a slew of funding changes, and I make a plea to the Minister, who is new in his role, to look at that seriously. All Governments have done that, but often during a year or at very short notice funding is withdrawn or drastically changed, and short-term initiatives are given funding designed to bolster a political announcement, which makes it complicated for colleges and providers to deliver and is often detrimental to learners.

There could be many examples of how the system is broken, but I do not have time to go into them all. One example is this: the number of ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—students in Hackney would have reduced by 35% but for the £400,000 paid by the Department for Communities and Local Government. When one Department withdraws funds, another often puts the money in, but that adds to the disjointed picture I have painted and, in a constituency such as Hackney South and Shoreditch, and in a borough such as Hackney, what could be more important than skilling up Britain by ensuring that those basic language skills are in place?

What plans does the Minister’s Department have for the adult skills budget in future years? I highlight in particular the £340 million reallocated from the adult skills budget to the employer ownership skills pilots up to 2015-16. How much has been spent to date, how many individuals have started those training courses, how many have finished them and where can MPs get routine information about how that money is spent? Both the Library and I had great difficulty in finding that, so I hope that, in a spirit of openness and transparency, the Minister points us in the right direction.

We have a shared interest in ensuring that we have the best possible quality of education in FE. We also need to recognise the vital role FE has in working with many adults who have had bad learning experiences in the past, and for whom simply attending class regularly is the first big achievement.

I am a regular visitor to Hackney community college, but I remember not long ago meeting two interesting learners, one of whom was training to be a painter and decorator. He had not enjoyed school and had failed to achieve basic qualifications in English and maths—that happened not in Hackney, but in another borough. He was unable to read. To look like the other commuters, he pretended to read Metro on the tube every day, but he could not read even the headlines. With support from his excellent tutors at the college he learned to read, and in a few months he was reading Metro for real. Such achievements may not be a great leap forward in academic terms, but they were a big achievement for him and, critically, they enabled him to progress in his chosen career rather than be condemned to a limited choice of low wage, unskilled jobs. That is the nub of the issue.

I also met a young woman, who is a mother of a young child, who similarly had not enjoyed maths at school, but, as she was training to be a chef, she could see the point in it. Again, she had support from Hackney tutors to ensure that she could get those necessary basic maths skills. For many, FE is a second chance at education, but, whether a first or second chance, it plays a vital role. Too often, however, it is the Cinderella of education. It needs to be on a more stable footing. Although we all want more money invested in training and education, my bigger plea is for colleges to be given the freedom and stability to make their own sensible decisions.

The Government have made many claims about the increase in the number of apprenticeships created. I would never be critical of the creation of new opportunities for young people, but we need to look at those claims carefully—they should be heavily caveated. The number of apprenticeships for over-24s has increased, while for 16 to 18-year-olds it has decreased in most areas. An added problem is that, in many areas, 16-year-olds are competing with A-level students and A-level students are competing with graduates for those valuable opportunities, so we are seeing inflation of apprenticeship competition. Sought-after apprenticeships require more interviews than a university place: the Rolls-Royce apprenticeship interview process is longer than that for Oxbridge.

We need to get back to the heart of apprenticeships: training on the job, for a job. We also need to ensure progression and opportunity for apprentices. I know that there is genuine desire in the Government to ensure that apprenticeships are a real opportunity, but we all hear bad stories about them not truly delivering. In Hackney, for example, I am approached every few months by yet another provider keen to provide tech apprenticeships in Shoreditch. They always want a base in Shoreditch and most want to go it alone—they do not want to collaborate with existing providers. Employers tell me that they are getting confused and potential apprentices have to shop around. The quality of the education is often unclear and difficult to assess for both the potential apprentices and the employers. I am not saying that there should be one single provider, but we need much more clarity on quality.

Information about apprenticeships should be clearer and quality control needs to be rigorous. Employers such as Optimity in Shoreditch, which has been in the vanguard of the tech apprenticeship set-up, is embracing that initiative. Such employers have a vital role to play—clearly, without employers, the apprenticeships go nowhere —but they need a simple route to working with the right education partner and ensuring that that apprentice gets good quality in both their training and their education. That requires more accountability and monitoring, such as that required of FE colleges. We all want high-quality apprenticeships, so we must be wary of watered down offers.

On the skills deficit, as MP for Shoreditch, which includes the international tech hub that is often called Tech City, I frequently meet business innovators who know what skills they need but cannot recruit people with them locally. Admittedly, the sector is fast-moving, and it is difficult for schools and colleges to keep up with the fast pace of change. For Britain to be successful and competitive—an ambition shared by all parties—we must ensure we have a highly skilled population that can compete with the best from around the world. Tech City is an international hub, not only because it competes internationally, but because it attracts people from all around the world to invest and work. For young people in Hackney to have a chance, we must ensure they are trained, but we must also ensure that adults can train to fulfil employers’ needs now and in future. We must not only equip school leavers, which we are doing effectively in Hackney, but provide opportunities for adults to take high-level skills training.

On the political side, there has been a lot of discussion about the UK Independence party and the sort of people who support it. There is a danger because many people in my constituency have been left behind—particularly men in their 50s who have skills but no paper qualification to prove it, who have never had a driving licence or a passport, who still live at home with their parents, and who cannot provide the paperwork and skills qualifications needed to take on the jobs that they are skilled up to do. I met a 56-year-old who had none of those things. He got training through the Olympics as a security guard and had all the right bits of paper. Although he was unemployed when I met him, he felt confident that he was ahead of the pack. However, there are many people in his position who have been left behind and would benefit from proper skills training.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills equality analysis showed that women students, students from black and minority ethnic background, and those from inner city areas are dropping out disproportionately from higher-level qualifications since loans for higher-level courses were introduced—sadly, Hackney ticks all those boxes. People are increasingly doing shorter, lower-level qualifications. I hope the Minister shares my concerns about the long-term inequality that problem creates. What does the Department intend to do to tackle it and prevent inequality from becoming imbedded in the system?

The number of students on advanced courses dropped by 20% between 2012 and 2013-14—one in five students fewer in only one year—according to research by the Association of Colleges. Are the Government liaising with business sectors to ensure that the future work force is appropriately skilled, and are they assessing the impact of that dramatic drop in numbers on Britain’s competitiveness?

The CBI and many other key business groups have called for the skills deficit to be tackled. I believe passionately that helping workers to retrain is vital. I have given an example from my constituency, and I meet many men and women from up and down the country who have been out of the workplace for a while, perhaps because they had children or a health problem. It does not take long for skills to get out of date, and it would be more cost-effective for the Government to have a strategy for retraining for higher-level jobs, because when people get those jobs they pay more tax.

In Hackney, the cost of rent, child care and housing is so high that many working families are trapped in a cycle of working poverty. As I was preparing to speak today, I received a heartfelt tweet from Sarah, who said:

“I would do anything to go back to some kind of adult learning to better my work skills so I can get a better job and hopefully be able to provide for my family and not be reliant on tax credits.”

Sarah speaks for so many of the forgotten people who work hard but have no realistic chance of skill development because minimum-wage employers often provide little or low-level training and the loan makes it impossible for them to think about higher skills training. There is great poverty in my constituency, but no poverty of ambition. The Government must revisit the impact of loans and assess what can be done to iron out the inequalities in the system.

My final point is about a real concern that I have. For some time I have talked about this issue, but too many people are still being taken off courses by the jobcentre when they are close to completion, even if the course would lead to longer-term, sustainable and better-paid work. The issue particularly affects parents, and usually mothers, whose present on their child’s fifth birthday is to be told that they cannot complete the course they have been doing for a few years because they need to seek employment immediately.

Hackney community college has done great work in negotiating for students, some of whom require only a week or two to complete their course. The cost of an additional couple of months’ benefit is minimal compared with the higher wage those people will earn with a good qualification under their belt. The additional tax they will pay and the fact that they will be less reliant on tax credits and benefits, as Sarah highlighted, will more than pay for it. I know the Minister’s influence does not extend to every part of the Government, but I hope that he, as Minister with responsibility for skills, will take that up with the Department for Work and Pensions. It is not dole for learning, but a sensible approach to skills training. It would be awful to condemn the many single mothers in my constituency to low-level, minimum-wage, low-skill employment for the sake of a few weeks of unemployment benefit, which would be a much bigger investment in their future, the future of their children and the future of Britain.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

The right hon. Gentleman is too good a numbers man not to recognise the trick he has just played, which is to take the total budget as his denominator and use only the number of starts achieved so far as the figure that he is declaring it against. If he looked at the amount of money that has been drawn down from the pilot, he would see that his denominator is a very much smaller figure and that dividing that three-hundred-and-whatever million by 20,000 does not present an entirely accurate picture.

[Meg Hillier]

On that point, £340 million has been allocated and has not been drawn down at the right rate. What is going wrong, what is the Minister doing to check on what is happening and how on earth is the situation being monitored to make sure that it is not just backfilling what employers would do anyway and giving money to businesses without them adding more to adult skills education?

[Nick Boles]

What this Government do not do—we do not believe in it—is just push money out of the door. That is what the previous Government did, which is why we inherited a deficit on the scale that we did. We believe in inviting people to come forward with bids and come up with quite experimental ideas—the scheme is unashamedly a pilot—and then checking whether those ideas are high quality and are adding value, and whether the money is going to be put to good use. If we do not end up spending all of the money mentioned, I will be the first to say that we did not do so because we did not have bids that were good enough and were going to deliver enough impact. That is the responsible way to deal with taxpayers’ money and money borrowed from future taxpayers, not the approach of the previous Government.

To return—it seems rather optimistic now—to areas where we perhaps agree, we need to have more higher apprenticeships. We also agree that although the increase in the number of adults doing apprenticeships is welcome, we should not allow that to be at the cost of 16 to 18-year-olds doing them. We therefore need to ensure that the offer is there and stands for everybody.

The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and a number of others asked me about the changes in the funding of apprenticeships under the new trailblazer standards. All I can say at this stage is that, first, I am looking at the matter extremely closely, and, secondly, before coming anywhere near politics—before coming into the policy world, let alone to Parliament—I spent 10 years running a business that employed 150 people in the manufacture of paint brushes and rollers. I have lived and breathed—and wept—the experience of running a small business. I am not going to be a Minister who puts burdens on small or medium-sized enterprises that persuade them not to do what we want them to—provide more high-quality, long-term, demanding apprenticeships that improve the skills of the people of Britain.

There were also a lot of questions about adult learning and its funding. It is clear that there have been some very difficult decisions in that area, which have caused difficulties for some institutions and further education colleges, and, as we heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, for some of the charities and social enterprises that work with FE colleges. Those decisions have also perhaps interrupted the availability of some provision, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) so eloquently described. We have had to make sacrifices, and it may be that some are never undone because of the fiscal situation we face as a country and the priorities we have to put in place. But we are going to look at the experience of advanced learner loans and then ask ourselves a series of tough questions about how much further it is right to go to align what is available for adult learners who are not going into universities with what is available for those who do.

We have had one little reassuring set of data. Wild and gloomy predictions were made about the effect of fees and loans on the participation of people from a range of different backgrounds, including poorer ones, in universities. Those predictions have not come about. Similarly, we have no evidence on advanced learner loans of any dramatic effect on or change in the profile of those who participate in adult learning. We will be looking at making sure the opportunities are available. They may need to be funded differently from how they were in the past, but it is right to see whether we can make sure they are available for all in the future. [Interruption.]