Technical and Vocational Education

Rob Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We heard a regrettable tone from Labour in opening this debate. Before going into the details of the radical reforms of vocational education that we are undertaking to promote apprenticeships and to strengthen vocational qualifications, it is worth going through a couple of points of detail.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) stated that the number of apprenticeships for those under 25 has fallen by 11,000 since 2010. He refused to take my intervention, probably because he knew I was going to point out that figures show that since 2010 the number of apprenticeships for those under 25 has risen by 49,000. He mentioned careers advice but forgot to mention the new National Careers Service, which has 3,700 careers advisers who have in the past year delivered 1 million pieces of careers advice. He did not even know that education is a devolved area of policy and talked about education across the UK. On the withering away of skills in science, according to Ofsted that is precisely the legacy we were left by the Labour party. On degree-level apprenticeships—I take this one as a personal compliment—he was critical of their representing only 2% of apprenticeships. I introduced degree-level apprenticeships this time last year, and under Labour there were no degree-level apprenticeships. Perhaps now we know why the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) left the Chamber halfway through the opening speech—it was to go and cross off another name from his list of leadership challengers.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, because the shadow Education Secretary would not do so when I tried very hard to get in earlier on. I listened very carefully to the shadow Education Secretary and heard a lot of top-down stuff, but very little about business. Why would he be so afraid of talking about business? Is it because his party is the anti-business party?

[Matthew Hancock]

It is certainly true that Labour is the anti-business party, but it is much more worrying that the Labour party seems to oppose our reforms to bring the world of education and the world of work closer together. We are undertaking the most radical reform of vocational education in Britain for a generation. We have swept aside thousands of qualifications that employers did not value and replaced them with clear tech awards, tech levels and the tech bacc, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned and which starts in September. We have boosted apprenticeship numbers—there are record numbers under this Government—and introduced higher-quality apprenticeships that reflect the modern economy, and strengthened the requirements for English and maths.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the passionate contribution of the former Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman).

To be honest, I was a tad surprised that Labour called for this debate, given that its record on the subject is quite mixed. I am, however, of a charitable disposition and I wish to be charitable now because I agree with certain things in the motion. It admits, for example, that the previous Government failed to transform vocational education in this country. We can also agree that credit should be given across the board to Lord Hunt for his work back in the 1990s and to Ministers in the previous Labour Government who increased the number of apprenticeships. I think we also agree that there is a need to study maths and English for longer and to place greater emphasis on the technicals.

There are, therefore, things that we can agree on, but I cannot agree that this Government have failed in the same way as the previous one in their attempts to reform apprenticeships and vocational and technical education. Their changes have transformed tens of thousands of young people’s lives. I guess that the problem for the Labour party is that it is in a negative spiral—it sees only the negative in everything at the moment and seems to want to talk down the country and young people. I find that very disappointing.

I am very proud of what this Government have achieved. They have transformed our educational system and the opportunities within it, driving up aspiration both in my Reading constituency and nationally. We have done that by recognising that vocational and academic education are two sides of the same coin—that vocational and technical education is every bit as valuable and necessary to the prospects of this country as academic education.

Let me tell the House about the transformation taking place in my constituency in Reading. It would be fair to say that, before 2010, this was an area with limited educational options for young people. In 2010, it was represented by an underperforming community school and an unsatisfactory college run by Thames Valley university.

My desire, supported by the Government when we finally had the levers of power, was to create what the Education Act 1944 originally envisaged for the UK but never implemented, namely a tripartite structure of education: academic, technical and vocational—all with parity of esteem and all offering something different to fit the aspirations of young people.

The first stage in engineering such a major change is to get investment, and this Government, in difficult times, have put their money where their mouth is. Bringing together business, the university, the college and others, we managed to persuade Lord Baker and the Government to back Reading university technical college, specialising in computer science and engineering. Reading UTC is rooted in the needs of local employers, which the Leader of the Opposition failed to mention in his speech yesterday. We deliberately set out to match the needs of local employers, to build them their work force of the future. That is why big companies such as Cisco, Microsoft and Network Rail got behind the bid and supported the UTC, but long-standing smaller local companies such as Peter Brett Associates are also deeply involved and committed.

The UTC’s only focus is on providing high-quality education, but it does it in a different way that is much more hands-on and technical. It does not try to pretend, as Labour has for years, that that can be achieved without the fundamental building blocks of learning. Therefore, it runs what it terms as basic academic courses for those who may have struggled with English, maths and computer science at another school.

The UTC concentrates on building strong relationships with business, because it understands that, without business confidence in the qualifications it offers, it will not succeed, and young people will not thrive. Businesses see that the UTC offers young people something unique—something that will allow them to stand out in the jobs marketplace. Parents see their young people gaining confidence as they gain in-depth knowledge of their specialism.

Having seen the impact that the UTC has made in the eastern part of my constituency, I am proud to support Lord Baker’s aspiration that many more UTCs should be invested in throughout the country. The local community school, which had drifted for years, suddenly sat up and took notice when it saw a world class UTC on its doorstep. That led to a new management team and new investment from the local education authority. Bulmershe school in my constituency is now on an upward and impressive trajectory.

Reading college, which runs a range of important vocational courses, has raised its game, and was recently awarded a good rating by Ofsted, with some elements of outstanding. It also recently announced funding for a solutions lab, which will bring together businesses, FE colleges and students to shape curriculums so that they are aligned with the needs of technical-based businesses in my constituency and the Thames valley. Its assistant principal described Labour’s old system as like

“being handcuffed to a set of qualifications to drive funding”,

whereas he welcomed the new system because it allows the college to provide a study programme that is crafted by the needs of learners, and not with funding in mind.

The final piece of the jigsaw in east Reading was an outstanding Wokingham-based school, Maiden Erlegh, which agreed to imprint its DNA on a free school from September 2015. It is nothing short of a revolution in my constituency in the provision of high-quality education for young people, whether vocational, academic or technical.

Labour failed in office to understand that equality between academic and vocational routes cannot be enforced by Government diktat. Setting up yet another body or qualification does not work by itself. The important thing is that qualifications are respected by business and the wider public. People can and will vote with their feet, as they did under Labour, if they think a qualification is not valued.