Educational Attainment of Boys

Noah Law Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I hope he will continue to contribute to the debate.

Boys feel undervalued, distrusted and anxious that they will not live up to society’s expectations. Sam Fender, an icon of the north-east, recently put it:

“We are very good at talking about privileges—white, male or straight privilege. We rarely talk about class, though. And that’s a lot of the reason that all the young lads are seduced by demagogues like Andrew Tate. They’re being shamed all the time and made to feel like they’re a problem. It’s this narrative being told to white boys from nowhere towns. People preach to some kid in a pit town in Durham who’s got—”

nothing—

“and tell him he’s privileged? Then Tate tells him he’s worth something? It’s seductive.”

We cannot leave that space to be filled by online influencers selling toxic answers. We have to offer something better—belonging, purpose and hope.

Evidence shows that boys thrive when, rather than being treated as a problem, they are trusted within a culture of high expectations, when we set them up to succeed, and when they know that their learning is relevant and will take them somewhere. The coded message in our current curriculum is that society values academic excellence over development of technical skills and know-how. It is as if we have replaced the 11-plus with a 16-plus exam, where those who get good GCSE results go on to sit A-levels, which are given higher esteem, and those who fail are pushed towards vocational courses, as though those skills are lesser.

A good example of a school that is bucking that trend, which is attended by some of the young people from my constituency, is the University Technical College South Durham, in Newton Aycliffe, which Ofsted recently rated as one of the happiest schools in the country. I have met some of its students. They all have familiar stories about how they were previously suspended and in trouble all the time at school, but when they attended the UTC they found purpose. They build relationships, promote leadership and make a child feel known, and that works—the children are thriving, boys included.

Elsewhere, schools working with the Yes He Can programme or applying the “Taking Boys Seriously” framework from Ulster University are closing gaps and rebuilding trust with disengaged boys, not coddling but understanding them—I looked up to see where the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was when I mentioned Ulster, and he is not in his place. Other examples are Hays Travel and Nissan, which will take young people from the age of 14 to give them vocational work experience.

I welcome the Government’s industrial strategy. It is really exciting that, for the first time in a long time, we are seeing a real effort to create meaningful career pathways into the sorts of secure jobs that young people in the north-east used to be able to aspire to.

Another good example is the plan to build 1.5 million homes. We know that we cannot do that unless we have more skilled young people coming into those professions. Last week, I spent half a day with some young apprentices from Bishop Auckland college bricklaying with Gleeson Homes in my constituency. It was fabulous to see these young men who really had a sense of direction: they knew that in a few years’ time, they would be earning good salaries and able to build good family lives.

[Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving a truly insightful and much-needed speech on this important matter. Will he join me in recognising the importance of pre-apprenticeship work for younger boys who are not yet ready to take on apprenticeships, as well as the value of some of the voluntary organisations, such as MPower in St Blazey in my constituency?

[Sam Rushworth]

One hundred per cent. That is another good example of why we need to create those pathways.

Let me say that I am not calling for us to stop encouraging young men to go to university. I am a working-class lad, and I was much better suited to going the academic route than I was to working as a mechanic or something, as those who have seen me put up a shelf will attest. I am calling for greater parity of esteem, respect for all skills and earlier opportunities for people to feel valued, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) just pointed out.

Skills England

Noah Law Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Antonia Bance]

As my hon. Friend might expect, I agree with him on all those points. I hope very much that our current Skills Minister’s tenure is significantly longer than the average, and that Skills England proves long-lasting and effective in responding to the industrial strategy.

We expect the Green Paper on industrial strategy perhaps as early as next week, but certainly by the Budget. This may be a tangent, but it is important. I want an industrial strategy that makes choices and sets out which sectors are our priorities—yes, clusters where we are already world-beating, or could be, but also places that are our priorities for industrial development and catch-up. Good growth must level the playing field, and national growth cannot be at the expense of left-behind places like the one I represent.

However, Skills England must respond not just to industrial strategy and migration, but to all of Government, as it touches skills such as our agenda for getting people back to work. We want people helped into real jobs that offer a route out and a route up, and not just any job. That means no more jobcentres running their own skills and education programmes separate to the priorities of Skills England.

Third, we need a Skills England that is directive, not hands-off; one that sees its role as supporting training that meets the industrial strategy, not courses that do not. I will give an example: one shortage occupation is lab technicians for our world-leading life sciences sector. If the gap is lab technicians, then it is Skills England’s job to make sure that the courses for lab techs run, are funded, are supported and are filled. If that means that young women in an area cannot do low-level hair and beauty courses that set them on a path to a life on the minimum wage, but are instead channelled into a higher-wage, higher-skilled job that offers a career path, such as being a lab tech, so be it. That is Skills England doing its job.

It may be easier and cheaper to run a business management course in a classroom at a college, but given the shortage occupation list and the industrial strategy, we need bricklayers and welders. Yes, it will cost more to make the facilities available and we may have to pay the lecturers a bit more too, but that is what is needed.

[Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that to achieve any of the outlined Skills England missions, we need a levelling of the playing field over time for further education, in particular for wages in the sector, and that we should work to rectify that, particularly in teaching sectors that are challenging to recruit for, such as critical minerals, as we see in Cornwall?

[Antonia Bance]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I was heartened to see that in her letter to the School Teachers Review Body my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education referenced the need to ensure that the implications for further education teachers are taken into account. I hope that, over time, we may be able to hear a little more about the plans in that area.

My most recent point raises a number of questions because Skills England does not hold the resources, although maybe it should—or at least some. I will leave that with Ministers.

Fourth, we need a Skills England that is relentlessly co-ordinating and engaging. As a country, we are still working out how to move away from the hugely over-centralised government machine, not least in places like my own west midlands where we are still in the infancy of having a set of institutions, people, power and money that help us determine our own future. I hope that Skills England will be a trailblazer not only for skills, but for a model of real partnership between regional and national where combined authorities can actually input into national policy.

I have three specific asks for the west midlands. Would the Minister consider moving responsibility for commissioning local skills improvement plans to combined authorities? Combined authorities such as ours could have more of a role in shaping the growth and skills levy. Finally, combined authorities are not just one of a range of stakeholders for Skills England; they should be represented at board level and in working groups as part of its structure. If this work is led only from Whitehall, missed opportunities will mean that local places are left behind. Those places may well be best placed to support the join-up required for coherent labour market policy, strategy and delivery when different Departments are intervening in the same place.

I will say one further thing—my fifth point—about how Skills England must work: it has to see its role as levering more money into training, pushing employers to do more and making it easy for them to do so. Employer investment in training has fallen over the past decade. Investment per employee is down 19% since 2011. I hope that a clear skills strategy will start to change that, sitting alongside, for the first time in a number of years, a stable Government giving business the confidence to invest. Skills England has to see its role as not just anticipating but driving demand among learners. It should raise hopes and aspirations and make it possible for young people to get the skills they need, as well as for people in their 30s, 40s and 50s to retrain and get on in life.

I will mention the role of unions again, because one of the least comprehensible acts of the previous Government was the sheer vandalism of ending the union learning fund in 2020. In 2020, 200,000 workers were supported into learning or training through the union learning fund. It was open not just to union members or in union workplaces, but to everyone, and it worked. Union learning reached people that other initiatives just did not. Most importantly, it reached basic skills learners. In union learning, over two thirds of learners with no previous qualifications got their first qualification. The fund added over £1.4 billion to the economy through the boost to jobs, wages and productivity. It cost £12 million, and that £12 million levered in £54 million from employers, unions and training providers in its last year. I very much hope that our new Government—so clear about the role of unions in social partnership—will make use of the reach of unions to workers and into workplaces that may otherwise not be reached by learning.

I will finish by setting all this in the context of my constituency of Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley in the west midlands. We are industrial towns shaped by factories, foundries, mines and canals. In my area, 42% of young people leave school without English and maths at grade 4 GCSE, and 2.5 times the national average have no qualifications. Round our way, 40% of job postings are looking for people with level 4 skills and above, but just 16% of the applicants have a level 4 qualification. That is why our wages lag behind the national average, employment rates are low and poverty rates are high.

I have—indulge me—three skills priorities for Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley. The first is manufacturing skills, and I wear the “Made in Britain” badge. In Sandwell, 1,000 firms and 21,000 jobs are in manufacturing, and we could make so much more than we already do with a determined effort to get local people into the right manufacturing skills courses to position us for advanced manufacturing supply chains across our region.

The second skills priority is construction. Our aspiration as a Government—something that is so close to my heart—is to build 1.5 million homes in the next five years. For that, the construction industry training board tell me that the current workforce needs to grow by 30%, with 150,000 more people working in construction. Everywhere in the country will need construction workers, but if we seek to bring up areas that have been left behind, we could turn that massive skills need into an opportunity, train those workers and bring those jobs to places such as ours.

Thirdly, we hear much about higher-level skills, but I am also always here to champion basic skills. Having solid literacy and numeracy skills gives workers a massive wage return and makes a big contribution to our economy. We could add over £2 trillion by the end of the century if we ensure that all young people get good basic skills by the end of the decade. I will always stand for high skills, good jobs and decent wages in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley. I hope hon. Members have heard from me today what approach Skills England should take to deliver for the country and for areas such as mine—it must deliver for areas such as mine.