Adult Skills and Lifelong Learning

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

It is a pleasure to be called in this debate, with you in the Chair, Ms Rees.

I thank the Education Select Committee for its outstanding report on the adult skills and lifelong learning landscape. It is honest and analytical, and it seeks to provide a route map of reparation and advancement. In what has been an overly complex web of funding streams and reduced opportunities, learning in adult life has become significantly bureaucratic, and nothing can disguise the scale of the cuts to adult learning—which this confusion has presumably been intended to mask.

The sheer scale of lost learning is concerning and it explains why, for a decade, productivity has been suffocated. It explains a decline in wellbeing and in mental and physical health. It most definitely explains a stifling of social mobility and—oh—the lost potential too.

When we talk to colleges of further education and other local providers, it is clear that the Government have failed to understand the power of adult learning. To this day, there is still a woeful insufficiency in funding. College staff are often on low pay and insecure contracts—devalued like no other professionals in the public sector, yet charged with the greatest of responsibilities, which is to nurture adults in a learning environment, which, in turn, unlocks new job opportunities, moves people out of poverty, and brings fulfilment and achievement.

The Minister will put a gloss coating on the tenure of her Government, but I have to say that nothing but regret should drive a commitment to do far more. A 45% cut in skills funding since the Tories came to power, as the Augar review noted, cannot be justified in terms of either economic or social equity. With participation in adult education at a 23-year low, that takes us back to the period when Labour picked up the failure of the previous Tory Government.

Now, 9 million people are abandoned to low literacy and numeracy skills, 6 million are without a GCSE or equivalent qualification—a decline of 87% under this Government—9 million are without the low-level digital skills necessary to navigate an increasingly digitalised society; 15% of 19-year-olds today do not have a level 2 qualification, and 60% do not have a level 3. Those people would have been just nine years old when this Government came in, and their education has taken place on the Government’s watch.

As we heard earlier, 49% of adults from the lowest socioeconomic groups have had no training since leaving school. Just last month, the Minister scrapped the union learning fund, not seeking to immerse herself in the evidence of how it got people who were furthest from education to develop a passion to learn, with the union learning reps at their side, giving them a new confidence. Even now, the threat of the Education and Skills Funding Agency clawing back millions of pounds from the sector is threatening the finances of colleges, as an impossible target of 90% provision of adult learning through the pandemic was set and is unachievable.

Scrapping that threshold today would show some commitment to colleges that a lot more is urgently needed, but, as ever, cuts have consequences, and those must be understood and never repeated. While the National Skills Fund is welcome, it must be recognised as a first step, since it will replace only a fifth of all that has been stripped away in the last decade.

If we are serious about seeing a skills revolution—and I am—we have to take down the barriers to learning, recognise its return, and empower local communities, local colleges and universities with the funding and scope they need to make learning accessible. In York, I see how York College is leading the skills strategy, and how the universities and colleges are shaping the economic strategy for the city. The value of those powerhouses must be understood.

On funding, I agree with the call from the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for a long-term plan, which is an economic necessity, and for Labour it goes to the core of our values. Withholding vital funding chokes off the economy and chokes off opportunity, yet the Minister is significantly holding back on the resources needed, not least at this time of crisis. We have heard about the ageing workforce and the loss of skills through Brexit, advances in technology and automation. Obviously, the fall-out from the pandemic, which we are facing now, and the climate catastrophe will demand real new skills to turn the situation around. Therefore, adult skills and lifelong learning have to be funded effectively.

The report shows that, incredibly, every pound invested in levels 1 to 3 of adult learning returns between £20 and £30. I am not sure that there is a better return anywhere else in the economy, so that is an investment that pays back, but to upskill and reskill, barriers have to be taken down. That is why I support measures that would ensure that adults who were learning received free childcare. I would remove the age gaps, particularly if we are to consider diversification of skills. Yes, invest in community learning centres in every town and city, which would ensure a place-based approach to learning and the economy. We should reinstitute individual learning accounts. Yes, the governance needed changing, but they were transformative, as I witnessed during my time as a union official.

I also call on the Government to look at the kickstart scheme. Many employers have been reluctant to take up this opportunity because they are concerned about what happens to people on the scheme at the end of the six months. Having a learning offer would certainly encourage employers to know that the people they have taught over the last six months and skilled up have an opportunity to move into a secure learning environment.

I also call for a right to learn. It is shameful that 39% of employers do not train any of their staff, yet they play a part in the economy. Everyone must have that responsibility, and a right to learn enshrined in law would secure that.

On digital, we have got a lot of catching up to do as a country, and these last 13 months have shown the deficit that exists. Free broadband, as Labour proposed at the last election, would certainly be a step on the way, but ensuring that people have the tools they need to be digitally savvy enough to navigate their way through the economy is absolutely vital, and there can be no holding back.

We need to have a look at ways of unshackling those opportunities in higher education to see more modular learning and more flexibility in part-time learning. Of course, that will mean that the funding structures need to change. I think it is high time that we look at the way that tuition fees have suffocated opportunities for people, and I certainly am an advocate of free higher education.

In particular, I want to close by bringing to the Minister’s attention an issue that a constituent raised with me. Her story is that she fled domestic violence, but education gave her an opportunity not just to rebuild her skills, but to rebuild herself. As the Domestic Abuse Bill is being debated in the Chamber right now, I ask the Minister to look at what my constituent is calling for: a secure way into further and higher education for people fleeing domestic violence so they have an opportunity to start their lives again.

If we applied that to other people experiencing challenges and vulnerabilities, just think how transformative it would be. I look at the work of Thames Valley police in diverting people out of county lines and the whole area of dealing drugs, and getting those youngsters into a learning framework instead of the criminal justice system. That has been transformational not least in reducing crime but also in giving those youngsters a chance again.

As we come out of this pandemic, more than ever we have seen the need to address mental health and loneliness, and some of the real challenges people have experienced. Social prescribing is at the frontier of that, and having a pathway into learning at this point in time could certainly address many of the health and wellbeing needs that people are facing. A creative Government could do so much to transform the lives of the people we represent as well as our economy, and I trust the Minister will reflect on the power of her portfolio and use it to its fullest.