Technical and Further Education Bill

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Money resolution: House of Commons & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

That work shows that colleges acting collectively can provide not only a higher-quality offer, but a broader one. We hope that through the local area review, other colleges will steadily make sure that they are co-ordinating their local provision for young people. Wherever young people are growing up, it is vital there is a strong further education offer on their doorstep if they want to follow a technical education route.

The good news is that much of the work is already well under way. Lord Sainsbury’s report on skills in this country led to the skills plan, which was published in July by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). Let me take this opportunity to wish him well, as will Members on both sides of the House, following the recent announcement about his health. I am sure that all Members look forward to seeing him back in the House as soon as possible.

The vision that my hon. Friend outlined in the skills plan involves streamlining technical education so that, despite the plethora of career opportunities, there are clearly identified routes into work that students can easily understand and that enable them to make informed decisions about their futures. The skills plan also explains how important it is for employers to play a big role so that the qualifications that young people obtain equip them with the skills and knowledge that they need to enter the jobs market successfully and start their careers. I shall come on to how the Bill will help us to deliver that.

Some 2.4 million apprenticeships were created during the previous Parliament. We want to build on our commitment to increasing both the quantity and quality of apprenticeships, and we remain committed to our target of creating 3 million more by 2020.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I accept that the Secretary of State is determined to ensure that enough students and other young people take up apprenticeships, but will she commit herself to a target for completing them, as well as a target for starting them?

[Justine Greening]

We do want to ensure that students complete their apprenticeships. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Higher Education and Research Bill commits us to widening our review of how inclusive and open higher education is, taking account of not just the number of young people who embark on courses, but the number who finish them, particularly if they are from more disadvantaged and diverse backgrounds.

As part of last year’s spending review, we announced that we would provide more than half a billion pounds this year alone to help further education colleges and sixth forms to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds or those with low prior attainment. Moreover, we are already committed to future funding levels. Those assurances will give the sector the security that it requires to deliver the skills that young people need if they are to succeed in modern Britain. We are committed to doubling the 2010-11 spending on apprenticeships, in cash terms, by 2019-20, and to protecting the national base rate of £4,000 per student in 16-to-19 education for the duration of this Parliament. By 2019-20, our funding for 19-plus skills participation will be £3.4 billion, which represents a cash increase of 40% on 2015-16. The steady progress of the Government’s programme of area reviews for the further education sector means that we have taken another important step towards giving institutions the opportunity to put themselves on a secure financial footing.

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[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). It is a rare treat for us to agree on something, but I did find myself shouting, “Hear, hear” about his comments on adult education. All of us in the House would applaud that, but I urge him to look at what has happened to adult education during the past six years, because I am afraid that that ladder has been well and truly kicked away for many of the people wanting to get such skills later in life.

It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). I entirely agree with much of what he said, especially about how we should tackle some of the deep-rooted causes of inequality and of the lack of social mobility in this country. To the issues he raised about the quality of early years education, which is so critical, and technical and vocational education, which we are discussing today, I would only add that we need enough quality teachers teaching all our children, but especially the most disadvantaged.

It is worth pondering for a moment, if you do not mind, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we should have been in the Chamber this evening to discuss a different education Bill—the education for all Bill, which was going to force all good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes. The Technical and Further Education Bill was only meant to be a small part of the bigger education for all Bill. I am glad we are not discussing that Bill, because it would have been a terrible mistake to force good and outstanding schools, against their wishes, to become academies, when we simply do not have the capacity, oversight and accountability in the system to tackle such a change. We all have to admit that in its place, we are left with a much-reduced education Bill. None the less, it contains some important principles, as others have said. I welcome the extra focus on post-16 vocational and technical education and the extra support the Government are giving it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central said, we should all welcome the direction of travel.

I want to raise a couple of issues with the unintended consequences of the Sainsbury review and how it is being implemented, including through measures in the Bill. I worry about the idea that, at 16, someone should choose either an entirely technical education or an entirely academic education. That is more akin to the grammar school era of the 1950s and ’60s than today’s world of work and modern economy. Most of the jobs that we need today and will need in the future involve a blended mix of academic and vocational education. They require general applied qualifications, where those two streams come together. As many Members have commented, that is exactly what the best university technical colleges and further education colleges provide—highly academic and highly technical education alongside one another.

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend mentioned joint pathways being undertaken by the same further education institutions. She might like to know that the secondary school where I am chair of governors has a construction academy attached to the main academy. We do everything from elite sport right through to construction and vocational pathways. It is all prestige and all rooted in academic and vocational attainment, all under one roof. We can do it from the beginning right through to further education.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. It sounds like just the sort of institution we should explore further and support.

As I said, many of the jobs that we need today and will need in the future require both types of education. The pathways into professions such as nursing, engineering, health and social care and many more require a blend of general applied and academic education, as well as technical and vocational education. That will be especially true in post-Brexit Britain, where the supply of such workers is likely to be reduced further, particularly in nursing, social care, health and engineering. Closing down those pathways at this point in time could have serious unintended consequences.

It is a well-trodden pathway for people to go to university to study nursing, health and social care or engineering with an applied general academic qualification and some technical BTEC qualifications alongside it. That pathway is highly regarded by universities. We should be careful about closing down that pathway, because if Ministers look they will see that the vast majority of the tens of thousands of undergraduates who come into the system through that route have that blended mix of academic and vocational qualifications.

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[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who shared with us his professional experience of guiding many young people towards the paths that they need to take. It is a shame that we have not given greater priority to further education in the past, because the skills challenge that we face remains acute, as it has been for a very long time. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), the shadow Minister, shared with us her own rocky path from secondary education to a career and secure work. A number of people find it a difficult path. That is the challenge that the Bill seeks to meet, and many of us are supportive in respect of both the path and the challenge.

I left my school in Bognor Regis—ironically, the constituency of the Minister for School Standards—with almost no usable qualifications. I had to return to secondary school at the age of 25 to obtain the qualifications that I needed in order to return to the education system. I know from first-hand experience that for many young people, the door to education is slammed shut and needs to be broken down. We all tend to assume that the doors to education, and indeed to all our public services, are open all the time. I am very keen to remind Labour Members, as well as others, that doors are often shut and that it is our job to break them open, rather than expecting individuals to remove the barriers to getting the best out of our public services the first time round without waiting for the second.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is making a strong point. Some years ago, funding for adult education at sixth-form colleges was taken away. Excellent teachers and wonderful facilities are no longer used in the evenings, which used to enable adults to go back and take A-levels, for example, and possibly go to university after that. The door was shut very firmly some years ago, and it should be reopened.

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend makes a good point.

This door being slammed shut, often in the faces of young people who do not have the skills to break it down or a background that encourages them to break it down, is one of the reasons why we have ended up with a society where those who are asset-rich will succeed in life and those who are talent-rich but asset-poor will very often not succeed. That is why it is incredibly important that we get this Bill right. It is of paramount importance for the Government’s plans for technical education, apprenticeships and the apprenticeship levy, which is now only a matter of months away from being launched.

It has long been my view that the levy as currently formatted is too rigid to fully take into account the skills challenges facing our country. When taking evidence on the issue of skills as a member of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills and as chair of the all-party group on further education and lifelong learning, it became clear that some sectors will struggle with the way the levy is currently formulated. The technology sector, for example, needs to invest very early, right back to the early years. I have visited many technology companies that are investing in nursery and primary education, and in secondary education. It is a sector that needs programming skills, and it needs imagination, flair and creativity in the way that people develop those skills. Often in such sectors post-16 is just too late. I support the apprenticeship levy, but we need to get it right, and if we are not careful we will end up with a perverse incentive in the system whereby technology companies are forced to invest in post-16 education, and in order to pay for it they will be withdrawing their support for pre-16 education, which would be a tragedy for our economy, particularly in the post-Brexit era when we might find that such companies struggle to secure investment and recruits from abroad with the right skills. We are entering tricky territory and we need to get this right first time. On mention of the word “Brexit”, I am very pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) is still in his place.

It also concerns me that existing spending on employer-sponsored degrees or graduate schemes will not be recognised by the levy. That risks closing those routes in favour of what could be entry-level apprenticeships in order for companies to get back what they pay for the levy. The Bill creates an institute for apprenticeships that also covers technical education. I want to see that institute play a strong role in ensuring that standards remain high in apprenticeships and technical education. I still have real concerns that the levy, along with the Government’s pledge to have 3 million apprenticeship starts—starts, not completions, I note—risks incentivising a dash for quantity rather than quality.

I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who made a fantastic contribution about the role of apprenticeships in providing productive pathways into the workforce for people with disabilities. At a recent surgery I was visited by the mother of a young woman who is trying to apply for an apprenticeship. She has a very specific disability that has always prevented her from succeeding in maths. It is an extremely difficult disability for her to live with, but all through the education system she has been provided with specialist support and allowances that have enabled her to succeed. However, she cannot apply for any apprenticeships because she does not have the maths qualification. She is applying for a dog grooming apprenticeship. It seems absurd to me that she is prevented from taking this incredible pathway into work because of her disability. I have raised this with Ministers in writing, and I hope that in his winding-up speech the Minister will show a willingness to inject a little common sense for those few people who struggle with the current system. Although this has an impact on very few people, it is a profound impact.

I have pressed the previous Secretary of State and the previous Minister for Skills on these matters. I should like to join other Members in wishing the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) well. He stood as a parliamentary candidate in Hove in the 2005 general election, in which I played a key role in the winning candidate’s campaign. I got to know the hon. Member well at the time, and I say with all sincerity that I and all those who worked on the campaign wish him a very speedy recovery.

I pressed him and the then Secretary of State to introduce a target for the number of apprenticeship starts at level 3 and above, because that is where the training will really address our skills needs. It is nice to know that someone has been reading all the parliamentary questions that I have been submitting on this subject, because the Policy Exchange’s report on apprenticeships, which was released on Friday, calls on the Government to do just that. I hope that the present Minister will take heed of that report. I would support him in embedding targets for quality as well as quantity in the Government’s plans.

I have also pressed the Government to set a target for apprenticeship completions, which I am sure we all agree is the key figure. There is no point in getting 3 million people to start apprenticeships if a significant number of them simply drop out. The Minister has not previously shown any interest in setting a target for completions, but I noted that the Secretary of State was more conciliatory on this point when responding to an intervention today. I hope that means that the door is still open and that such a target will now be considered.

The Institute for Public Policy Research report calls for an assurance that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education will have the necessary resources and power properly to enforce quality standards. I totally agree with that. Only last week, I asked the Minister for details of the staffing levels for the institute. I hope that we will get clear answers to these questions during the passage of the Bill. Given the imminent closure of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, which did a great deal of work with employers to utilise labour market information to map out skills gaps and sectoral needs, it is vital that the institute is able to fill that void. If it cannot, we will be much worse off.

The Bill also introduces a new insolvency regime for FE colleges, with the aim of protecting students if such an institution should become insolvent. The Government say that this follows on from the area reviews, which aimed to ensure that all FE colleges within a certain area were on a solid financial footing. In Brighton and Hove, we are lucky to have three excellent colleges: BHASVIC, City College and Varndean College. Our area review, covering Sussex, started last year, but despite an expectation that the final report would be published some months ago, it still has not seen the light of day. I hope the Minister can offer some reassurance to me and my neighbouring MPs, as well as those in other areas who are waiting for their reviews to be published, that they will be released shortly. Providers and students are anxious to know what the future holds for the institutions in which they work and study. In the Budget in March, which feels like a very long time ago, the Government pledged to

“review the gaps in support for lifetime learning, including for flexible and part-time study.”

Will the Minister update us on that, too. When can we expect the results of that study?

I welcome the Bill as a chance to focus on technical and further education, which often feels neglected in the overall educational landscape in this place and beyond. However, the Bill and the Government’s policy priorities leave a lot of questions unanswered, and I hope that the Bill’s passage through Parliament will give us a chance to remedy that.