Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Boles Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

10. What assessment she has made of the effects on performance for sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.

[The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

Although sixth-form colleges have had to make a contribution to our efforts to deal with the massive budget deficit left by the previous Government, the number of students in sixth-form colleges attaining level 3 qualifications by age 19 has increased by almost 8% since 2010.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister will know that recent figures show that academies have access to 35% more funding per student than sixth-form colleges, yet sixth-form colleges still have to pay VAT, insurance and capital costs, diverting money away from teaching and learning. As the Minister settles into his new job, what will he do to secure fairness in education for all young people?

[Nick Boles]

Fairness is exactly what we are trying to achieve, and we want a system whereby students receive the same level of backing for their studies regardless of the institution to which they go. Despite the previous Government having had 13 years to sort out the unfairness of the school funding system, we inherited a system that was byzantine in its complexity, and it is taking us some time to work it out.

[Julie Hilling]

A number of sixth-form providers across Bolton have contacted me to say that the funding regulations for sixth-form colleges mean that they are under pressure to place students on additional courses to meet the minimum hour requirement, which is detrimental to those students who succeed better when they are focused on just three subjects. Will the Minister look again at the regulations that are pressurising students to follow educational pathways that are not in their best interests?

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to look into any question that the hon. Lady raises, because she is a great expert in this area. I do not recognise the charge, but I am happy to look into it if she would like to send me more information.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The Minister is right to remind the Opposition that they had 13 years to put right the anomaly, but we have had four years. What is the justification for continuing for another year a funding formula under which sixth-form students at an 11-to-18 school have two thirds more funding than if they go to a sixth-form college?

[Nick Boles]

The great Sir Bob—my hon. Friend—is of course so experienced in the House that he knows he has attacked Ministers for withdrawing funding from one institution too quickly, and I am sure that he has argued for damping mechanisms for any sudden effects of changes in the funding formula. There is always a balance to be struck between ensuring that the funding is fair and ensuring that no institution has the rug pulled from under it. It is a balance that we are determined to achieve.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding the undoubted unfairness of their funding arrangements, sixth-form colleges are the most successful institutions in our education system, with regard to both the quality of education provided and value for money. When will the Government take steps to increase the number of sixth-form colleges across the country, and would the Minister care to visit the superb Luton sixth-form college in my constituency to find out how good they really are?

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to take up any invitation; as the former planning Minister, I do not get so many. I will simply say that there are more places in sixth-form colleges this year than there were in 2010. Despite the funding constraints and the need to make some difficult choices, this Government are backing sixth-form colleges.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of work-related learning in schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

9. What assessment she has made of the effect on admission numbers for sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.

[The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

In case it was not clear the first time, let me explain that despite a fall in the population of 16 to 19-year-olds, sixth-form colleges have been allocated 2% more places in 2014-15 than in 2010-11.

[Ian Lucas]

My question is different from the one that the Minister answered earlier, so it would be helpful if he addressed himself to it specifically. The Sixth Form Colleges Association tells us that £100 million has been taken out of sixth-form colleges since 2010, and we have also heard about the disparity they face in connection with VAT. Why are this Government treating sixth-form colleges so badly?

[Nick Boles]

I do not want to be pernickety, but the hon. Gentleman’s question reads as follows:

“What assessment she has made of the effect on admissions numbers for sixth-form colleges of funding changes”.

The answer is that the funding changes have produced an increase in admission numbers to sixth-form colleges.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

May I ask the Minister to turn his mind from the general to the specific—namely, City College Coventry, which trains about 50% of 16 to 18-year-olds in Coventry and which, for the year 2015, is receiving an 18% cut? Will he look at that specifically and perhaps come with me to visit the college?

[Nick Boles]

I would be happy to look at the particular financial situation of the college in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and to see how the damping mechanism that is in place is working in that case.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

11. What progress has been made on the traineeships programme; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

The Government launched traineeships last August to help 16 to 23-year-olds to develop the skills and vital experience they need to get an apprenticeship or a sustainable job. Some 7,400 young people have already started a traineeship.

[Rehman Chishti]

I welcome the Minister to his new post, and I know he will do an outstanding job. What commitment have the Government received from major national employers to offer traineeships to young people that will also help to benefit the 640 NEETs in Medway, which covers my constituency?

[Nick Boles]

I am delighted to be able to tell my hon. Friend that Virgin Media, Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens, the BBC, National Grid and Barclays, to name just a few, are committed to setting up and offering traineeships. I will certainly be happy to look into seeing whether any of those could be available to his constituents in the Medway area.

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

We now have a raft of opportunities for young people—traineeships, apprenticeships, sixth-form colleges, further education colleges—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That is not to say that they are all something that Government Members should claim credit for. Does that not underline the importance of good, transparent, independent careers advice from a young age—from 14? Would the Minister be willing to come to speak to constituents of mine who have expressed to me very strongly their desire for access to face-to-face careers advice at an early stage so they can make the right choices in life?

[Nick Boles]

The National Careers Service does provide face-to-face meetings for up to 1 million young people, but I am of course happy to meet the hon. Lady and her constituents. We recognised that not all schools were doing exactly what we expected of them. That is why we produced new guidance on making sure that schools are doing what is required of them in offering young people a choice of opportunities, not just within the school but among all other institutions, to take their education forward.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

12. What progress she has made on introducing the technical baccalaureate.

[The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

This feels a little like machine gun fire, but I am always happy to take bullets from the hon. Lady. The technical baccalaureate will be available in all schools and colleges from this September. Students will need to pass one or more tech levels and a maths qualification, such as AS maths or the new core maths qualifications, and to undertake an extended project.

[Lyn Brown]

I will do my best with the bullets. When the Leader of the Opposition announced the “tech bac” at the Labour party conference in 2012, the Tories briefed that it would leave thousands of young people unemployable. How many young people does the Minister predict will be taking up the Government’s “tech bac” from September 2014, and how many of them does he think will be unemployable?

[Nick Boles]

The reason we are in government and the hon. Lady is not is that we are very good at taking ideas that are not yet perfect and making them perfect, which is exactly what we have done with the idea of a “tech bac”. I am very hopeful that about 25% of young people will take up the opportunity of a “tech bac”. The key thing is what is in it—that the qualifications that make it up are themselves demanding. That is what we are ensuring.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

15. What steps she is taking to improve the quality of child care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a national scandal that under the previous Government an estimated 350,000 young people a year were studying for post-16 qualifications that offered no route into stable employment or higher education?

[The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Government have got rid of 3,000 poor-quality qualifications allowed in by the previous Government who, in doing so, debased the currency of qualifications and led young people up the garden path with no real prospect of getting a job at the end of it.

Ofsted (14 to 17-year-olds)

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

It is a great pleasure, Mr Caton, to serve under your chairmanship in this first debate to which I have been invited to respond in my new job. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—he is an old friend only because we have been friends for a long time and not for any other reason—on securing this debate and bringing to it his customary insight, passion and wisdom.

We have heard from three Members who are the very models of modern Members of Parliament and are not content just to respond to casework and to make speeches in Parliament, but seek a deep understanding of the issues affecting their constituents and think creatively about long-term solutions to those problems. They do not stop there, but devise programmes and initiatives in their constituencies to bring partners, businesses, charities and public sector agencies together. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, they even raise money personally to fund some projects. That is what being a Member of Parliament is about, and I wish I could claim to be nearly as good a one as my hon. Friends.

There are many phrases and much jargon that a newly appointed Minister must get to grips with. We have heard some jargon this morning—work readiness—which I do not like any more than I like any other jargon. I feel peculiarly un-work-ready this morning, having had less than 24 hours to get my head around the issues. Nevertheless, I have the advantage of the superb work of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who properly earned the respect of colleagues in the House for his indefatigable energy, enthusiasm and drive.

I join hon. Members in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), the former Minister for Civil Society, who is one of the most decent and honourable men in politics. I regret that he is no longer in his role, but I know that he will continue to work hard to support the charitable sector and to help turn society around through the good work of people in that sector.

My understanding, which is high level and brief, is that when the Government came to office in 2010, we inherited a system in which there were brave intentions, but fundamental dishonesty. The fundamental dishonesty lay in the fact that we said to many young people that if they studied a range of courses and collected qualification confetti, they too would be able to share in the benefits of our growing economy. That was not true. It was not true in 2010 when the economy was not growing and it was not even true in 2007, 2006 and 2005, when our economy had been growing for a very long time, but a huge number of people—for all their GNVQs and other qualifications—were not able to share fully in the benefits of it. That fundamental dishonesty is the key challenge that we have tried to face with the help of the fantastic Alison Wolf and others. We have tried to identify the core skills that are essential for every young person to acquire if they are to have a chance to share in that economic prosperity.

In my previous job, my simple mission was to get more houses built so that young people could have a chance to own their own home, as my generation and previous ones have done. In this job, I have an equally simple mission to ensure that every young person acquires the skills they will need to share in our economic recovery. We have made substantial progress even while coming out of one of the deepest recessions for several generations, but we have not made enough and we are not satisfied. We will not rest, and the work will continue right up to election day and long afterwards to ensure that that mission is fulfilled.

I believe that we were right, as hon. Members on both sides of the House recognise, to scrap some of what my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole described as the GNVQ fiddle and some of the qualifications that purported to give people the equipment to get a job, but did not. We were perpetrating a fraud and it was entirely right that we got rid of that fraud. However, I have heard clearly from the hon. Member for Nottingham North and my hon. Friend that perhaps that reform has gone too far. I am not saying yet whether I agree with them, but I promise to talk to them and other hon. Members—and to the Chairman of the Select Committee, who may have similar concerns—and to understand where that concern lies and consider how we can preserve the massive gains we have made while dealing with any issues.

The other important thing we have done is to revive, restore and re-inspire the apprenticeship concept. It had become a low currency in our education and training system and I am glad to say that that is no longer the case. We are on track to deliver 2 million apprenticeships over this Parliament—not just 2 million in number, but 2 million high-quality, long-term apprenticeships that people who run businesses and other organisations value and that provide real ways of getting young people into good, long-term employment.

In the few minutes remaining, I want to deal with some of the specific points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham North and others. On performance measures, the hon. Gentleman was good enough, as he always is, to acknowledge that the progress 8 measure is an important step forward in addressing some of his concerns. I will be very happy to explore with him whether that measure is absolutely the best answer, the only answer and the complete answer. I am glad that he welcomes it and I look forward to talking to him further about that.

The hon. Gentleman talked about a desire to engage with Ofsted at national level, having rightly and properly praised Ofsted in his own area. I will be straightforward with him. I will secure him a meeting with officials at national level at Ofsted and I hope that he will then meet me to discuss the outcome. I cannot promise always to agree with him, but I promise to engage with him and to talk to him as he makes progress.

I want to refer to a couple of the programmes to which my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) referred because they are tremendously important. They have new university technical colleges opening in their constituencies, and that is a superb initiative. Like most good Government initiatives, it was invented by a previous Government, developed by a later Government and is now being further developed by the present Government. I strongly welcome it and I am delighted that those two communities have benefited from it.

The National Citizen Service initiative is important, and I am proud to claim a small portion of the authorship. In opposition, I was responsible for developing that policy and for creating Charity Challenge, which is now the leading provider of the National Citizen Service. I am particularly delighted that the Labour party is an enthusiastic supporter of the National Citizen Service and look forward to it being developed and offered to all teenagers as they reach the appropriate stage, whoever is in government.

I acknowledge the important work of the Imagination Library. I did not know about it, but I am even more keen on it now that I know that Dolly Parton had something to do with it. It is a fantastic project, and it is fantastic that my hon. Friends are being so constructive in supporting it and ensuring that they can offer it to their constituents.

I am tremendously privileged, lucky and happy to have been given this job. Like poor Manuel, I know nothing at the moment, but I am keen to learn and this debate has been the most fantastic tutorial that a new Minister could possibly have. It would be hard to find four Members of Parliament with more passion, commitment and knowledge. I look forward to learning from them and working with them. I hope that together, we will ensure that young people have the skills they need to share in our economic recovery.

[Mr Allen]

Will the Minister come to Nottingham to see the work we are doing?

[Nick Boles]

I will be delighted to do so.

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

We will now move on to our next debate, which happens to be on the National Citizen Service.

Careers Service (Young People)

Nick Boles Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will come to that in a moment.

The Secretary of State could guarantee it simply by inserting the words “face-to-face”. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), the shadow young people’s Minister, introduced such an amendment to the Bill on Report. I find it extraordinary that Government Members can troop through the Lobby to vote against face-to-face advice for young people. [Hon. Members: “And the cost?”] As I said a moment ago, the cost was put forward by the Conservative party. It costed its own all-age—[Interruption.] I am trying to answer the question. The Conservative party promised and costed a fully funded, all-age careers service which maintained those currently employed in the Connexions service. It promised £200 million.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

Where has the money gone?

[Andy Burnham]

Exactly, what have the Government done with that money? Where have they spent it? Those are questions for the hon. Gentleman to answer, not me.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Boles Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is it true that there are 100 civil servants in the Department working on the free schools programme? If it is not 100, how many is it? What is the cost of that number of civil servants, and what on earth are they doing?

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

More than they were under you!

[Michael Gove]

Yes—a very good prompt from behind me. There are just around 100 civil servants working on the programme and I am delighted that they are, because I am convinced that helping idealistic figures, such as Peter Hyman and Sajid Hussain, a state school teacher who is setting up a school for disadvantaged students in Bradford, is a good thing. We are bringing schools to the areas of deprivation let down by the hon. Gentleman and his party. Instead of civil servants having their time diverted to the sort of politically correct projects that preoccupied the Labour party, at last they are concentrating on driving up standards for the poorest, and I am proud that it is the coalition Government who are doing it.

Schools Funding

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. No, absolutely not. I wanted to make sure that Members had as much information as possible. In the course of my statement, I outlined the criteria by which I had been guided and the fact that we were going to terminate those projects which had not reached financial close, with the exception of some projects which were at the so-called close of dialogue stage. The fact that the list was placed in the Library, and not on the Table of the House and in the Vote Office, is something that I deeply regret and for which I should like to apologise once more. The hon. Lady’s question provides me with an opportunity to say, once again, that I am sorry, to her and to other colleagues.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

The whole House welcomes the Secretary of State’s gracious apology. However, is not the real deceit the more heinous because it was intentional—the one perpetrated by Labour Members who ran around the country during the election campaign promising school rebuilding programmes that they knew the money was not there to supply? That is a disgrace.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me say very gently that, in so far as one can hear everything that was said, the hon. Gentleman has made his point, and made it very clearly, but the Secretary of State is not responsible for the policies or for the behaviour of other parties. He might, however, wish very briefly to reply.

Education Funding

Nick Boles Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to his constituents. He will be aware that the situation in Stoke-on-Trent is one of the worst examples of the way in which the bureaucracy associated with BSF has delayed necessary investment in rebuilding the school estate. Stoke-on-Trent is one of those local authorities that has reached financial close, so therefore school rebuilding will go ahead—and I hope that it will do so more quickly and efficiently.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is curious that Labour Members seem so obsessed with state-of-the-art buildings and so uninterested in the quality of teaching in schools? Will he confirm that our Government will have different priorities?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It was interesting that the shadow Secretary of State was so contemptuous of the investment in Teach First: it was very revealing of his priorities.