A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]]

I am excited by this Queen’s Speech—excited that, for the first time in many years, skills and further education are a core part. My maiden speech in 2010 was about apprenticeships, and I have yearned for the skills agenda to be embedded within Government. If the heart of levelling up is about education and skills, then we are truly in a good place. If levelling up means providing a ladder of opportunity for millions of our countrymen and women to learn, train and reskill, providing job security and prosperity for themselves and their families, then we will both meet the skills need of our nation and equip ourselves for the coming fourth industrial revolution. As the skills and FE Bill passes through Parliament, we will of course examine the finer details, but the vision of a lifetime skills guarantee providing all adults with the opportunity to retrain and skill for a lifelong learning entitlement is a huge step forward. The offer of free level 3 courses for those without A-levels could do much to retrain those who do not have the right qualifications to advance in key professions. My only wish is that this would come much sooner than 2025. I hope that in time the Government can build on this by providing an adult community learning centre in every town and by giving businesses a skills tax credit for every worker they retrain in vital skills.

We need to address the huge fall in part-time learners for higher education with maintenance support and greater financial muscle for institutions such as the Open University that do so much for disadvantaged students. The Open University is one of the great education inventions of the 20th century and an institution that puts levelling up first and foremost. For too long further education was denied the opportunities given to higher education, both in terms of funding and prestige. Over many years, there has been a culture of snobbery about FE. This has been all the more astonishing given that further education colleges meet our skills needs, provide a ladder of opportunity for thousands of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and are places of social capital. I have seen this myself in over 70 visits to Harlow College in my constituency. I have urged the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), or the Secretary of State to visit our wonderful college to see the work that it does as a showcase for the importance of FE to our country. The proposals look to build the prestige of further education and create more employer-led qualifications. As the Secretary of State, who has demonstrated a real passion for FE, has acknowledged, this must be backed up by a real-terms increase in funding. Further education has often been described as the Cinderella of our education system, but we should be reminded that Cinderella became a senior member of the royal family and could banish the two ugly sisters of snobbery and underfunding once and for all.

In the longer term, the Government should, alongside the remarkable kickstart programme of financial support for businesses that hire apprentices and young people, look at reform of the apprenticeship levy to ensure that more disadvantaged would-be apprentices can climb the skills ladder. Degree apprenticeships should be rocket-boosted with the ambition of having at least half of all students completing degree apprenticeships over the next 10 years.

Alongside FE, I would like the Government to do more to support university technical colleges. They have some superb outcomes and our ambition should be to have a UTC in every town across the country. Sixty-one per cent. of UTCs were rated good or outstanding in the past year compared with a national average of 50%, while in 2020 55% of students went on to university in contrast to 50% nationally, and 13% went on to do an apprenticeship whereas the national average is just 6%.

The White Paper mentions careers guidance. We will not transform skills unless we change careers guidance fundamentally. There is too much replication, duplication and overlap with the Department for Work and Pensions. Department for Education careers advice must be about skills, skills, skills. It must ensure that all the way through schooling pupils are taught about apprenticeships and FE and given more opportunities for work experience. Ofsted should focus on this kind of careers guidance, in short implementing the Baker clause—a much stricter criterion of inspection. Our curriculum should be changed to embed work and skills all the way through children’s, pupils’ and students’ learning.

The Government have put out the levelling-up skills ladder of opportunity. I am really optimistic that this Queen’s Speech will bring people to that ladder and help them climb to the top.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We now go to the SNP spokesperson, Clare Monaghan.