Education, Employment and Training: Young People

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

I heartily congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), a real friend whom I have known for many years, on securing the debate. Not only is he passionate about his constituency, but as he has shown in his speech, he is passionate and knowledgeable about youth employment, skills, apprenticeships and much more besides. It is an honour for me to be able to respond to him in this debate. He is also a member of the all-party group on youth employment, and he wants young people to acquire the education and skills they need in Kettering. He is absolutely right about that, and he wrote to me about it before the summer. I welcome the debate, because I share that passion.

Let me answer the first of his points by saying that I will be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s local college and meet Youth Employment UK, perhaps at the college. His second request was about careers advice and support. Everything we are trying to do is to ensure that careers advice is central to our young people, and I will go into detail about what we are doing.

My hon. Friend’s third point was about having a strategy for young people who are not employed or in training—I dislike the terrible word “NEET”, as there is nothing neat at all about being unemployed and not in education or training. Not only are we working collaboratively with the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), and the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), in a cross-government youth forum, but we have a strategy in the Department.

I was over the moon when my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering mentioned the “ladder of opportunity”. Everybody who knows me knows that I talk about that all the time, and that ladder has a real strategy to it; it is not just a slogan. One pillar supporting that ladder is about strengthening higher education and further education, and the other is about opportunities and social justice. The first rung of that ladder is careers; the second is quality qualifications; the third is championing apprenticeships and skills; the fourth is lifelong learning; and the fifth is job security and prosperity. That last one is the goal for everyone to get to at the top of that ladder. Our Government bring people to the ladder and help them climb up every step of the way. That is the strategy, and there is a lot of detail to each part of the ladder.

My hon. Friend’s fourth request was about the good employer standards. I have worked previously with the Investors in People, which looks at employers who encourage apprentices and skills. I have been looking at the brilliant website of Youth Employment UK; as he rightly mentions, it is a Wikipedia of everything there is to know about youth employment. I will look at what it says and at the work of IIP to see whether there can be any collaboration there and with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

It is important to note that nationally the NEET figures for young people—16 to 24-year-olds—in England have been lower for several years. At the end of 2022, the rate was 12.3%; it is down by nearly a quarter since 2010. My hon. Friend has shared concerns about the slightly higher than average youth unemployment rate in his area among 18 to 24-year-olds, but there is some good news: just 2.6% of 16 and 17-year-olds in the wider north Northamptonshire area, covering his constituency, are not in employment or training, and that is well below the national average of 5.2%. Nationally, age 16 and 17 not in employment or training rates are consistently lower. In 2011 the figure was 6.6%, but by the end of 2022 it was just 4.5%. However, there is still a lot more to do, as my hon. Friend rightly highlighted.

The key thing that my hon. Friend wants to know is what we are doing for young people in his area, and I am happy to provide that information. As he pointed out, the main FE provider in his constituency is Tresham College, part of the Beford College Group, which has 7,700 learners on 16 to 19 studies. It boasts a huge range of full-time, part-time, higher education and apprenticeship provision, from science to business administration, from computing to care and childcare, and it is home to the prestigious training restaurant.

There are a number of apprenticeship providers in Kettering. As an aside to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who asked about the apprenticeship levy, he will know that that is devolved to Northern Ireland. We devolve a portion of the national apprenticeship levy raised to all the devolved authorities, and it is up to the devolved authorities how they spend it. In fact, the devolved authority has more flexibility than exists in England; in England the money has to be spent on apprentices, but the devolved authorities have much wider discretion on how they spend it. I am happy to look at that and work with him on it. I hope to go to Northern Ireland soon to look at the Turing scheme operating there, so I am happy to discuss with him and his colleagues how we can make the apprenticeship system work better in Northern Ireland.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering will be pleased to know that there have been 11,220 apprenticeship starts in Kettering since May 2010, and there were 770 last year. There are great apprentice employers for young people in his area, such as Travis Perkins, Northampton Healthcare, Mercedes and AMG High Performance Powertrains, which produces Formula 1 engines. There is the Creating Tomorrow College, a specialist post-16 institution that looks after 16 to 25-year-olds with cognition and learning difficulties. I am sure my hon. Friend is proud of that.

We are making a huge investment in post-16 education, benefiting constituents in Kettering, in my constituency of Harlow and across the country with an additional £3.8 billion over this Parliament. We are improving the FE estate to the tune of £2.8 billion. We announced a £125 million boost to further education back in January, including £12 million for the Bedford College Group. We announced even more funding for young people’s education: an extra £185 million in 2023-24, and £285 million to come in 2024-25. We invested over £7 billion during 2022, to ensure that there is a place in education or training for every 16 to 18-year-old who wants one. By 2024-25 we will be spending £2.7 billion on apprenticeships.

As I mentioned to my hon. Friend, one of the pillars supporting the ladder of opportunity is social justice. Skills education and training is fundamental to get those young people who are not in employment or training into work. I will briefly mention the three strands of social justice—place, privilege and prestige. Social justice is rooted in the places people come from—where they grow up, gain their education and find a job. We want to deliver for places that need a sustainable jobs and skills ecosystem.

There are 31 primary and six secondary schools in Kettering giving a good education to young people. There are 38 employer-led skills improvement plans across the country, working out what skills are needed in the local area. My hon. Friend’s constituency falls within the south-east midlands local skills improvement plan, bringing together employers to make sure they fill the skills deficit as we need them to. Previously, the strategic development fund awarded £1.25 million in revenue and £1.49 million in capital funding to south-east midlands colleges.

My hon. Friend talked about careers. We have the local careers hubs and we have done a lot of work on careers, ensuring that apprentice organisations go into schools. We have now legislated—I pushed this through when I was Chair of the Education Committee—to ensure that schools have to have at least six encounters with technical organisations, such as technical schools, apprentice organisations and further education colleges. The apprenticeship support and knowledge programme is going around the country encouraging young people to do apprenticeships and learn skills. My hon. Friend will be pleased to learn that in the past year, in north Northamptonshire, 8.5% of starts were taken up by those from minority backgrounds.

My hon. Friend talked about social justice quite a bit in his speech. We are investing £18 million in the supported internships programme. I worked hard to ensure that we could increase the care leaver’s bursary, which used to be £1,000. It is now £3,000. A young person who has been in care can get a bursary to encourage them to do an apprenticeship.

Prestige is incredibly important. My hon. Friend mentioned the German system. When it comes to technical and vocational education, I would love for us to have the German, Scandinavian, Austrian or Swiss education system in our country. That is what we are doing with our T-levels and our higher technical qualifications. Some 390,000 technical awards or technical certificates have been issued to students, which is an incredible achievement. Then we have T-levels at post-16. My hon. Friend talked about expanded work placements, and we have 18 T-levels coming on board from this year. We have more and more students doing our world-class T-level programme, which is designed by employers. That means that students who do them will be likely to get good jobs. It is exciting that Tresham College is delivering T-levels.

We are strengthening further education, ensuring that we are recruiting excellent FE staff. We have brilliant further education colleges up and down our country, which do not get enough mention. We have introduced teaching bursary schemes of up to £29,000. We are getting bespoke industry experts to get into FE teaching to share their skills with the next generation. We will have 21 institute of technology colleges, 12 of which have opened so far, that will transform tertiary education in our country. They are teaching T-levels, higher technical qualifications and degree apprenticeships. They are all over the country and, with this collaboration of further education and higher education, they will be the transformative institutes of the future.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Careers & Enterprise Company, which now partners with 70% of schools and colleges. In his own area, the south-east midlands careers hub engages with 26 education institutions across north Northamptonshire, including nine schools and colleges in Kettering. We know that where there is interaction with the careers hubs and the Careers & Enterprise Company we have fewer young people not in employment or training and more people learning skills, doing apprenticeships or getting good jobs, which my hon. Friend and I both want to see. I should mention that on T-levels, this year we had a pass rate of 90.5%, with 69.2% of students receiving a merit or above. From this month, 18 T-levels will be available at nearly 300 providers. We have the apprenticeship offering and the T-level offering, as well as the traditional academic offer. I mentioned that he has T-levels being delivered in his local college and more in the pipeline. Higher technical qualifications—level 4 and 5—are being introduced as well. There will be 106 higher technical qualifications available from September 2023, offering yet more choice.

I have talked quite a bit about apprentices. We have now lifted the cap for small businesses so that they can employ as many apprentices as they want. We pay employers and providers £1,000 each when they take on a 16 to 18-year-old apprentice, and cover 100% of smaller employers’ training costs for this cohort. It is our job right now to give young people the opportunities that they need so that they can climb the ladder of opportunity—